The UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is due to be abolished in 2013, and will be replaced instead by a brand new organisation, the NCA (National Crime Agency.)

However, the fight against fraud continues, and at present SOCA is still actively undertaking a relentless front line battle against organised crime.

Just last week, it was announced that a joint operation with the FBI and US Department of Justice had resulted in the closure of thirty-six websites that had been responsible for countless cases of identity fraud through dealing with stolen payment card and online bank account details.

This sort of international co-operation and departmental co-ordination is exactly the sort of action that the new streamlined structure of the NCA is intended to build on, once it takes over the responsibilities of SOCA next year, and we hope to be able to bring you more similar success stories in future updates.

UPDATE: In an apparent act of revenge, it has also been reported today that the SOCA website has itself been taken down using what is known as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. This is only likely to be a temporary issue, but it does go to show what the authorities are up against, when trying to counter serious organised fraud.

[Source: SOCA]

The regular Fraudscape reports from CIFAS, the UK’s fraud prevention service, contain a wealth of information about the state of fraud in the UK, including identity fraud.

We highlighted the latest annual report from CIFAS, including data for the whole of 2011, during last month in this blog. However, it is often in the weeks afterwards that some additional interesting trends come to light.

For example, although it only accounts for a relatively small proportion (just over a tenth) of the overall number of cases of identity fraud, bank account related identity fraud rose by over a third between 2010 and 2011.

In 2010 there were 11,030 cases of bank account fraud that also involved identity fraud, but by 2011 this figure had shot up to 14,873 cases, an increase of 34.8%.

Almost all of us need to use a bank account, but it appears that this is one specific area that is increasingly being exploited by fraudsters, and therefore something that we as vigilant citizens need to be particularly aware of.

We will continue to seek out relevant information about identity fraud and changing trends, whenever this type of information is published, and will keep this blog updated with articles on this subject.

[Source: CIFAS]

We have the British justice system to thank for there being another identity fraudster behind bars this week, as Southwark Crown Court found 23 year old Edward Pearson from York guilty of making an article for use in fraud and two counts of possession of an article for use in fraud.

Pearson is now serving 26 months at her Majesty’s pleasure, but the details of the court case suggest that the scale of his identity fraud crimes could have been a lot more severe, had he not been caught as soon as he was.

Although he had only been able to make less than £2,500 from fraudulent transactions, the catalogue of sensitive personal data that was discovered by police indicated that enough information was available, including details of over 2,700 bank cards, to inflict the same misery on many more innocent victims.

So, we can be thankful that the police have been able to stop Edward Pearson before any more victims were affected, but sadly there are still many more active fraudsters that are still at large.

[Source: York Press]

ActionFraud is a service that is run by the National Fraud Authority to provide a central point of contact for information about fraud and financially motivated internet crime.

Identity fraud is just one of the aspects that the service covers, but we thought that the ActionFraud service, and in particular a brand new campaign that has recently been launched, entitled ‘The Devil’s In Your Details’, was something that would be particularly relevant to our readers.

Although the ActionFraud service is available to all people of all ages, the latest campaign is targeted particularly at young men aged 18-25 and women aged 18 to 55, as these groups in particular use their personal information on a regular basis for activities such as social networking and online shopping, and can sometimes be more vulnerable to fraud as a result.

The key message of the campaign is to keep SAFE, by remembering the following four simple steps:

S = Suspect anything or anyone you don’t know – no matter what or who they claim to be.
A = Ask questions. Whatever a fraudster tries, you have the power to stay in control.
F = Find out for certain who you’re dealing with. Challenge anything that seems suspect.
E = End situations that make you uncomfortable. If you feel threatened, contact the police

There are also some additional resources, which can be viewed via the ActionFraud website, including videos and a Facebook application, which may be useful for anyone that wishes to find out more information about the campaign.

So remember to stay SAFE!

[Source: ActionFraud]

Following the release of top level figures for fraud in the UK, that were released earlier in the year, some further information and analysis is now available to show a more detailed view of the current state of fraud in the UK for the most recent whole calendar year of 2011.

The full report can be viewed in its entirety via this link from the CIFAS website (pdf document), but we will also highlight a couple of the most relevant trends.

As has been observed in recent years, cases of Identity fraud once again accounted for almost half (47.9%) of all cases of fraud recorded in the UK for the whole of 2011.

Although there was a small fall in identity fraud cases that were categorised as ‘Mail Order’, between 2010 and 2011, all of the other three categories, namely ‘Communications’, ‘Bank Account’ and ‘Plastic Card’, recorded year-on-year increases, and the overall number of cases rose by over 10%, as we have noted previously.

Of course, we will continue to monitor statistics about identity fraud, as and when they are made available, and will publish further blog articles to keep you informed on this subject.

[Source: CIFAS]

There has been more focus recently in the media about identity fraud using hi-tech methods.

Aside from fraudsters trying to obtain details from your smartphone or to overcome online banking security, we should not forget that it can still be alarmingly easy for fraudsters to steal your identity using more old-fashioned methods as well.

A feature for BBC’s local ‘Inside Out’ show for the West of England, showed just how easy it was to steal the identity of one of the presenters without his knowledge, just from what had been left out in rubbish bins or recycling.

The article can be viewed here, and if you are very quick you may also be able to catch up with the show via the BBC’s iPlayer service [only available until 8pm on 05/03/2012.].

This feature reiterates just how important it is to shred documents, and not just the obvious ones. In fact, anything that contains personal data about you, including your name, address, date of birth etc. can be used to build up information about you that could then be used to steal your identity.

Sometimes fraudsters are able to take different pieces of information from several different documents, each of which would be useless in isolation.

As a final step, don’t forget that you can also do your bit for the environment by adding the shredded paper to a compost heap.

[Source: BBC West]

We always like to bring you news of any significant announcements that are made by the government to try and reduce fraud in the UK.

We have previously blogged about news of changes in the way that the UK government plans to reorganise relevant departments to try to reduce cyber crime, and following on from previous updates there has now been a further announcement by Frances Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office.

A series of new measures is being proposed, including the establishment of a taskforce on fraud error and debt, as well as improvements in the way that different government departments collaborate and share data.

Whilst we welcome any positive steps that the government is planning to take to help combat the fight against all types of fraud, including identity fraud, the timescales involved to achieve the planned objectives are perhaps slightly disappointing, with some of the announced steps not expected to be fully in place until 2015.

However, we would hope that a more co-ordinated approach to fraud by all relevant government departments might help to stem the tide of fraud cases in the UK, which until now has shown little sign of slowing down. There was a 10% rise in the number of identity fraud cases during 2011, with over 100,000 individuals having been affected in each of the last three full calendar years.

As we have noted previously, changes will not happen overnight and it will take time for new initiatives to bed in and have a meaningful impact. However, we will of course be monitoring progress in the hope that these measures will start to take effect over the course of the next few years.

[Source: Cabinet Office]

To their credit, over recent years, many UK banks have gone to great lengths to provide additional security measures for their processes to protect their customers when they use online banking.

However, it appears that no matter how sophisticated these security measures become, there is always a danger that hackers will eventually find ever more sophisticated ways to circumvent whatever safeguards are put in place.

Many banks, including Barclays and HSBC, now provide customers with a small chip and PIN card reader that generates a unique code that the customer then uses before key transactions can be authorised, eg: to set up a new payment, or to make transactions over a specific threshold. The intention of this extra layer of security was to generate a unique code that was only valid for a very limited period of time, and could only be created by the customer using their card in combination with their PIN.

In theory it all sounds extremely secure, but there are now some suggestions that even this level of security is not 100% secure in all cases. BBC Click has undertaken an investigation showing that certain aspects of this supposedly secure process can still be prone to attacks from hackers, who are able to exploit weaknesses using malware and alter the process.

Of course, it isn’t possible to release too many details about the specifics of the weaknesses, for fear of further exposing the issues with the process, but there does at least seem to be some admission from banking security experts that the measures could be ineffective under certain specific circumstances.

Hopefully the banks will now investigate the results of this research further, rather than remaining complacent, and will step up their processes to ensure that customers are not defrauded when they bank online.

[Source: BBC Click]

As reported by CityWire, the latest set of statistics on fraud in the UK, for the whole of 2011, are now available. And they don’t make very pleasant reading.

The UK’s Fraud Prevention Service, CIFAS, provides regular updates to indicate the extent to which different types of fraud, including identity fraud, are taking place in the UK. The latest bulletin confirms what we have suspected from the interim updates issued during 2011. There was a rise of over 10% compared with the previous year, with over 113,000 reported cases of identity fraud throughout 2011.

We have now seen that the number of identity fraud cases in the UK has breached the 100,000 mark in all of the last three full calendar years (2009 – 2011), and although there have been quarters where the number of cases has plateaued or fallen slightly, the overall trend is still very worrying indeed.

Also, as has been the case for several years, identity fraud cases still accounted for almost half (48%) of all fraud cases during 2011.

To avoid becoming part of the next set of identity fraud statistics, you can discover more about the identity fraud prevention service offered by Identity Alarm, by clicking here to view our main website.

[Source: CityWire]

We’re only just into 2012, but it hasn’t taken long for a very high profile news story involving the loss of personal details of hundreds of thousands of people.

The Mirror website has reported the loss of personal data from over 1.4 million customers of Shopacheck, which helps to provides loans to people, many of whom struggle to obtain credit elsewhere or who already have poor credit ratings or County Court Judgments.

As we have seen in the past, these high profile data loss incidents often do not involve any financial data, but due to the nature of Shopacheck’s relationships with its customers, it is believed that the payment history details of over 600,000 customers is among the lost information.

Shopacheck’s MD has already written to customers to highlight the increased risk of identity fraud, and a freephone helpline: 0800 8406 563, has also been set up for current or past Shopacheck customers who may still have concerns.

[Source: Mirror]