Cybercrime has almost doubled in our country in four years. This emerges from police crime statistics.Internet fraud refers to the various forms of scams that occur on the Internet. The figures show strong growth in online fraud cases between 2018 and 2020 (+91%), followed by more moderate growth between 2020 and 2021 (+4%).The breakdown of computer crime shows that it is dominated by computer fraud with more than 82% of cases in 2021. This is the online variant of fraud in the classic sense. Hacking and computer forgery come second and third with 9.5% and 7.5% of the total, respectively. Finally, sabotage remains relatively marginal with less than 1% of the total.Although the phenomenon of phishing is still common, there has been a 26% drop in the amounts extorted, which amounted to 25 million euros in 2021 compared to 34 million euros in 2020. Intensive monitoring of banks, cooperation between the various parties stakeholders and the various awareness campaigns have contributed to this decrease.However, there is a significant shift to new forms of fraud, such as investments, invoices, help requests or fraud on enhanced accounts where victims are pressured to transfer money themselves. However, banks’ security systems prevented much of the damage: about 75% of all fraudulent transfers due to phishing were detected and blocked or recovered.In 2017, 21,605 acts of cybercrime were recorded. That number rose to 48,440 in 2021. In the first half of last year, they already counted 28,562 facts, increasing the number almost three times in five years.More than four out of five cases registered (23,858 of the 28,562 facts in the first half of 2022) dealt with information fraud. This was followed by hacking (9%), computer forgery (6.5%) and sabotage (0.6%). Internet scams doubled in the same period from 14,174 recorded acts in 2017 to 19,489 acts in the first half of 2022.
