CYBER crime in Oxford is becoming so prevalent it is replacing traditional thefts, a police chief has said.

Superintendent Christian Bunt, area commander for Oxford, said more criminals are targeting victims online instead of in their homes.

It comes after the annual crime figures showed almost all thefts in the city dropped in the last year.

Between April 2014 and March 2015 there were 101 recorded robberies, down 22 per cent from the 129 in the previous year.

Burglaries dropped by 16 per cent from 1,007 to 847 and vehicle crimes – stealing cars and items within cars – dropped by 26 per cent from 1,048 to 779.

Supt Bunt said: “Crime is changing. Increasingly it’s moving online.

“There’s a natural shift in some of the crime trends.”

Cyber crime can include online fraud, hacking, illegal monitoring and the grooming of victims for sexual offences.

A survey by credit company Experian found one in six adults in the UK has fallen victim to a cyberattack.

Supt Bunt said: “Burglary is fairly high-risk for an offender in terms of getting a custodial sentence.

“We will increasingly see more criminal activity online, whether its for financial gain or through exploitation and grooming.

“Lots of young people have access online and we will see more crime move there.”

Oxford-based charity healthtalk.org was hacked in November by campaigners who replaced their website with activism messages.

But even though no data was taken, it still cost the charity more than £10,000 to get back up and running.

Technology manager Adam Barnett said: “They wiped everything from our servers and replaced it with an anti-Israel message.

“We have back-ups and were back online in three days, but there were about 60,000 people in those three days who couldn’t reach our site.

“It was pretty bad. We had to get outside help and it cost a lot.

“We try to appear as stable and permanent as possible for the vulnerable people who need us and there’s a real worry about damage to reputation.” One company providing increased security is Voip.

co.uk in Bicester which sells online security systems.

Chief technology officer Adam Crisp explained that businesses using telephones which operate through the internet are not always secure.

He said: “If you have got customers who are entering their credit card details, it allows the transmission of that information to other people.

“If you’re a criminal and want to get that there are ways. It’s a really good reason why people should want to protect themselves.

“Another really, really common thing is criminals who can get into phone systems and use them to benefit financially.

“They call premium rate phone calls that gives them more money every second.

“Often they hack in on Friday night so its not picked up until Monday morning and the company faces a huge phone bill.

“The impact can be catastrophic for customer confidence as well.”

Cyber crime is such a problem for businesses the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School has launched an education programme on cybersecurity.

The two-day Cyber Risk for Leaders Programme is designed to help senior executives protect their businesses.

Its co-director Prof David Upton said: “Cyber security is no longer the preserve of the IT manager.

“The scale and potential costs to an organisation means that responsibility for managing that risk lies with the most senior executives.

“It has to be taken as seriously as any other operational, reputational or financial risk.”

How to protect yourself

  • Don’t click on links in suspicious emails.
  • Always use a home screen lock on your mobile device.
  • Don’t store account names and passwords or digital pictures of your passport.
  • Keep personal information to yourself.
  • Beware of public computers and free wifi.
  • Only buy from reputable websites and look for “https” in the website address.
  • Use credit cards rather than debit cards when making large purchases online.
  • Check your accounts and your credit reports regularly.
  • Choose a secure password with a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
  • Ensure your have an anti-virus product and it is up to date.