The LKA Lower Saxony published the crime statistics for 2023 on Monday this week. The area of online crime hardly appears in it, which is why the State Criminal Police Office has now provided trends in certain types of crime at the request of heise online. Accordingly, the level of online crime remains high; there were once again tens of thousands of reports of cybercrime cases.
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On Monday, the LKA provided more detailed figures on the distribution of child and youth pornographic images and videos. There was a sharp increase there, by 39.9 percent to 8,549 cases. The change in reporting mechanisms for offenses related to child pornography is also responsible for this. “For several years, various Internet providers have been sending suspicious activity reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which are initially processed by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and then sent to the federal states. The BKA continues to note that the NCMEC suspicious activity reports continue to have a major influence the development of the number of cases and suspects in this area,” discussed the LKA Lower Saxony. It adds: “In 2023, around 35 percent of the suspects in the area of child pornography were children and young people. In the area of youth pornography it was around 46 percent.”
Cyber fraud in Lower Saxony
The LKA Lower Saxony did not provide specific figures on online crime this year, but it did provide trends. There were still around 3,000 cases of online grandtrick variants in 2022, with 150 crimes committed and a damage total of around 1.5 million euros. Here the number of advertisements has fallen slightly into the lower four-digit range. The number of crimes committed fell below 100 cases, as did the amount of damage, which is still in the lower seven-figure range.
The crime area of “false police officers” was more extensive in 2022, with around 7,800 cases and 200 completed offenses and a total loss of around 4.5 million euros. The reported cases have decreased slightly, but remain in the upper four-digit range. However, the amount of damage increased significantly in 2023 from the low to the upper single-digit million euro range. According to the LKA, this is due to the increased number of completed crimes.
Reported messenger fraud and phishing rose slightly in the upper four-digit range; in 2022 there were still 9,150 cases. While victims were cheated out of around 5 million euros, both the number of completed crimes, which are still in the lower four-digit range, and the amount of damage fell slightly – this slipped into the lower seven-digit range.
The total damage from online crime amounts to around 10 million euros, after 11 million euros in 2022.
The figures for 2022 were based on the initial statistics from the LKA Lower Saxony, so they were not yet the final figures. The BKA is not yet providing any figures for the past year, but refers to the planned publication at the beginning of the second quarter of 2024.
(dmk)