CHESHIRE has the sixth highest rate of cybercrime in the UK, figures reveal.

A report from cybersecurity business ESET looked at cybercrime data from the City of London Police’s Fraud and Cyber Crime Dashboard to reveal the most common types of cybercrime in the UK and the areas with the highest rates of cybercrime.

Cheshire comes sixth in this list – with a total of 541 cybercrime reports in 2021, equal to 50.6 cybercrimes per 100,000 people.

This is down 10.8 per cent from 2020.

In comparison, London tops the list – with 5,258 cybercrime reports in 2021, equal to 58.5 cybercrimes per 100,000 people.

This is down 11.8 per cent from 2020.

The report also reveals hacking of social media and emails is the most common type of cybercrime, followed by computer viruses, malware and spyware.

ESET says: “Cybercrime can take many forms, so it's important to understand what constitutes a cybercrime.

“Hacking for example is any unauthorised act that modifies the contents of a computer with requisite intent and knowledge.

“This can be in the context of social media and email accounts, servers, computers not connected to servers (personal hacking) with the intent of blackmailing (extortion) or remotely attacking telephone systems (pbx/dial through hacking).

“Cybercrimes can also take the form of denial-of-service attacks, in which a perpetrator prevents an internet service from operating or makes it unavailable to its intended users by bombarding the site with thousands of hits causing it to overload and shut down.

“The releasing of computer viruses, malware and spyware is also a cybercrime, as these computer programmes are designed to disrupt or deny the operation of a computer or to gather information from a computer and pass it to others.”

For the full report, click here.