Hong Kong Cybercrime Continues to Rise

First published: 30^th January 2019

Speaking at a press conference on 29^th January, Commissioner of Police Stephen Lo said, "The traditional crimes are all enjoying a healthy downward trend, but unfortunately because of the new technology or new IT technology in the world, including the Internet, we are suffering from an increase in the deception over the Internet. So what we can do is to enhance education and publicity.”

Statistics for 2018 show that criminal cases fell 3.2% compared with 2017, but technology crime cases rose. The police statistics do not show a technology crime category. However, two categories that are frequently implemented online nowadays increased: blackmail cases rose from 579 to 635 (9.7%) and deception cases rose from 7091 to 8372 (18.1%).

Statistics from the Government InfoSec website are currently only available to 2017, and they show a fall in both the number of cases and the financial loss per case from 2016 to 2017.

Hong Kong CERT statistics show a 55% increase in reported security incidents from 2017 to 2018.

Stephen Lo also announced the launch of Police Weibo and Twitter accounts to promote crime prevention.