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Internet 'has made fraud easier'

While the internet has been of significant benefit to consumers and those running businesses in recent years, it has also made us much more open to attacks by criminals intent on ID theft.

So states industry commentator Equifax, which has observed that the increasing prevalence of the internet in everyday life has provided a low-risk avenue to be exploited by fraudsters and others with malicious intent.

Neil Munroe, external affairs director at the company, stated: "We are all ... a lot more active on the web and fraudsters have realised that there is a lot of information around that they could get from people that they may not have been able to get ten years ago when the web was less developed."

He added that such online privacy crime was quick and low in cost, while posing significantly less risk to the perpetrator than robbing a bank or other more immediate means of theft.

The news follows recent figures from fraud prevention service Cifas which stated that were 77,500 reported cases of ID theft last year.

While this was a slight reduction on the 80,000 seen in 2006, it was significantly higher than the 9,000 reported in 1999.

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