What is Cybercrime?

Last Updated on September 26, 2026 by Karl Thompson

Cybercrime refers to illegal activities carried out with a computer over a network such as the internet. The main points to know are:

1. There are many types of cybercrime, from identity theft and online fraud to hacking, viruses and cyberwarfare.
2. Sociologists distinguish between cyber-dependent crime, which can only happen online, and cyber-enabled crime, which is old crime made easier by the internet. Most cybercrime is cyber-enabled.
3. Fraud and computer misuse are now among the most common crimes in England and Wales, making up over half of all crime measured by the Crime Survey.
4. Cybercrime is global and informational, which makes it hard to measure and hard to police.
5. Sociological theories help explain it: routine activity theory, globalisation, and Marxist ideas about crimes of the powerful and state crime.

Cybercrime is part of the media and crime topic within the Crime and Deviance module, examined on Paper 3 of the AQA’s A-level sociology specification (7192/3). It is also useful material for globalisation and crime.

Types of cybercrime

Some of the most common types of cybercrime include:

• Identity and data theft
• Internet fraud (online scams)
• Hacking (unauthorised access to networks)
• Infecting devices with viruses
• Denial of service (DoS) attacks
• File sharing in breach of copyright
• 3D printing of illegal products
• Cyberwarfare
• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM)

The key characteristics of cybercrime

• The use of digital technologies: a desktop or laptop computer, but also mobile phones and games consoles.
• It takes place over networked devices. (NB this means one of the main ways to protect yourself is to DISCONNECT OR SWITCH OFF your devices whenever you can!)
• Most cybercrime is informational. It involves an attempt to access and steal personal, corporate or government information, or an attack on online identities.
• It is non-local. Cybercrime takes place in ‘cyberspace’, not in a real physical location. Having said that, there are physical locations where attacks originate from, and these are often in different countries from the victims, making cybercrime very global in nature.
• There is a considerable ‘data gap’ when it comes to what we know about cyber criminals. More than 80% of victims of online fraud can say NOTHING about the person who committed the crime against them, for example.

Cyber-dependent and cyber-enabled crime

This is a common distinction in criminology, used for example in the Home Office’s 2013 review of the evidence on cybercrime by McGuire and Dowling. It is also a very useful analysis tool for A-level sociology students!

Cyber-dependent crime refers to crimes which can only take place over computer networks, such as hacking, viruses and denial of service attacks. These are relatively new crimes, as they have only been possible since the emergence of the internet.

Cyber-enabled crime refers to OLD types of crime that the internet has made easier to commit. This is MOST cybercrime, and includes identity theft, fraud, file sharing, counterfeiting and child sexual abuse material.

There may be some types of fraud which you think aren’t possible in the offline world, such as stealing money from people through catfish-style romance scams. Technically, though, this would have been possible before the internet, through newspaper dating ads and photos sent by post. As you can imagine, this would have been A LOT more difficult back in the day!

How much cybercrime is there? (2026 update)

The best measure of cybercrime against individuals in England and Wales is the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), which has included fraud and computer misuse since the year ending March 2017. ‘Computer misuse’ is the official term for cyber-dependent crime: hacking, and using viruses or malware to disrupt services, steal information or extort people.

According to the ONS’s Crime in England and Wales bulletin for the year ending March 2026:

• There were an estimated 4.5 million fraud incidents, with the number of fraud victims up 10% on the previous year to 3.8 million.
• There were an estimated 798,000 incidents of computer misuse.
• Together, fraud and computer misuse made up over half of the 9.6 million incidents of headline crime measured by the survey.
• Fraud has increased by 32% since the year ending March 2017. HOWEVER, computer misuse is around 55% lower than in 2017, so it is cyber-enabled fraud rather than hacking that is growing.
• Businesses are victims too: 19% of businesses and 14% of charities had experienced at least one cybercrime in the past year.

This matters for the sociology of crime. Most of the traditional theories you study were developed to explain street crime, but the single most common crime a person in England and Wales is now likely to experience is fraud, most of it committed online. There’s more on this in my post on fraud and computer misuse as the most common crimes in the UK.

Police-recorded figures are much less useful here, because most victims never report fraud. In December 2025 Action Fraud was replaced by a new national reporting service, Report Fraud. While the changeover happens, police-recorded fraud and cybercrime figures have been suspended, which is another reason to use the survey data.

Examples of cybercrime

Below I provide some examples of famous historical cybercrimes and more recent ones, to illustrate the nature and extent of some of the types listed above.

(I’ve left out child sexual abuse material. It’s a bit sensitive.)

Identity and data theft

Only around 5% of the internet is visible (searchable by Google). The other 95% is the Deep Web, which includes the Dark Web. This is where people’s and corporations’ private data is stored, invisible to Google and encrypted, so that most people can’t gain access to it.

HOWEVER, data breaches are VERY common. This is where a company’s private records are hacked, or its security weaknesses are exploited by other means.

This infographic shows you the extent of data breaches, and some BIG companies have been victims: Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Experian and many, many others.

Some estimates put the annual cost of data breaches to companies at over $2 trillion.

If people’s personal data is breached, it can make its way onto the internet where other people can access it. Sometimes this data is made available for free (just for lolz); other times it is put up for sale on the Dark Web. The latter is more likely if the data has financial value, like people’s bank details.

Depending on the type of stolen data, it can be used against people in the following ways:

• Email lists can be used in personalised phishing attempts. If a criminal has a list of Barclays customers’ emails and other details, he can put together a more authentic-looking Barclays phishing email.
• Personal data may be used to open bank accounts and apply for credit cards, which can then lead to financial crime being committed in other people’s names. This is essentially identity theft.
• Some data might damage people’s reputations, like the Adult Friend Finder data breach: many people on that site were married.
• If passwords are hacked, they can be used to take over people’s social media and other accounts and use them against them. Ever received an email from a friend you haven’t heard from in years, directing you to click on a link? They were probably a victim of a data breach!

If you want to find out whether your email has been in a data breach, or ‘pwned’, click here (NB not a scam!): HaveIBeenPwned.com.

When I first wrote this post in 2021, Have I Been Pwned showed that data in over 11 billion accounts had been breached, and that the details of over 200 million of these had been ‘pasted’ online, making them available for other people to access.

NB: data breaches are not always the work of criminal organisations or lone individuals. The Pegasus spyware scandal is an example of a corporate-enabled state crime, in which people’s data was accessed illegally by various governments around the world.

Internet fraud (online scams)

Internet frauds, or scams, are many and varied. They include, but are by no means limited to:

• Covid-19 scams. A VERY unfortunate response to the pandemic was the emergence of lots of fake websites and emails (a form of phishing) offering people everything from ‘quality’ (in reality rubbish) face masks to rapid tests for travel to fake vaccines.
• Get-rich-quick investment scams. There must be thousands of fake profiles on Instagram and other sites where users claim to be making LOTS of money trading stocks, crypto, currencies or property, and say that if you invest with them, you get a cut of their profits. You invest a little, get some returns, then invest more, then your buddy stops contacting you and runs off with your money.
• Instagram influencer scams. Influencers can get scammed too, especially the up-and-coming ones, with bogus offers to ‘come to this amazing location or event sponsored by Cosmo and take photos – but you’ve got to pay some money upfront for the hotels, drivers and flights’. They arrive to find the first night paid for, then nothing else, and no sponsors of course!
• Phishing scams. ‘You’ve won a prize! Please click here and enter ALL your personal and bank details so we can transfer it into your account.’

• False shopping scams. Bargain websites with ‘too good to be true’ prices: you pay for some goods at a crazy 70% discount and then, err, never receive them!
• Romance scams. Someone sets up a fake profile on a dating site and worms their way into the confidence of the unsuspecting victim they message. This can take months, and eventually they need a substantial sum of money, perhaps to help with a relative’s medical expenses following an accident. In the USA alone in 2019 there were 146 00 victims who reported losing an average of $6,000 each in these scams.
• Advance fee (‘419’) scams. This is THE classic scam, named after the section of the Nigerian criminal code which outlaws it. The victim is promised a large sum of money, such as an inheritance or a share of a fortune, in return for paying a smaller fee upfront.
• Scareware. ‘Your computer is infected, please call this number to get it sorted’, which may lead you to become a victim of the following…
• Tech support scams. Someone claiming to work for Microsoft or your broadband provider calls you (or you call them, following their scareware attack) and ‘helps’ you get rid of the virus infecting your computer. In the process you give them access to your PC, and they download all the data on it, which may include bank details and passwords. They can use these to take your money or set up fake accounts in your name, which links back to identity theft above.

A recent example of a get-rich-quick scam is outlined in this BBC article. The victim explains how someone he followed on Instagram claimed to be making a lot of money trading currencies, and said that if people invested with him, he would carry on trading in the same way and deposit their share of the earnings back into their accounts.

The victim said he started off with a small amount of money, £1,000, started to see returns, and gradually invested more and more, until the returns stopped. He’d lost a total of £17,000 to a scammer who had set up a fake Instagram account.

NB: watch out for Instagram. According to one estimate, almost HALF of accounts are fake.

Hacking (unauthorised access to networks)

Kevin Poulsen is one of the world’s most famous hackers. In 1983, at the age of 17, he hacked into ARPANET, the Pentagon’s computer network. He was quickly caught but not prosecuted, as he was a minor at the time.

He ignored the warning he received and carried on hacking. He gained some fame by hacking into radio stations’ servers when they ran competitions guaranteeing that the 100th caller would win a prize. He made sure he was that caller, and won a Porsche and $20,000.

He served five years in jail for his crimes but is now reformed, and is a ‘white hat’ hacker who works for Wired magazine. You can read more about his story here. NB this is a great example of a biography providing insight into criminal behaviour!

Another interesting type of hacking is ‘hacktivism’, most commonly associated with the group Anonymous (‘We are Legion’). In 2008 they famously took on the Church of Scientology, attacking its websites and making them less visible on Google.

According to this article, hacktivism had something of a resurgence during Covid-19. If you’re interested in finding out what Anonymous are up to, there’s a collection of articles from Wired here.

3D printing of illegal products

3D printers bring an interesting twist to cybercrime, and are a good example of cyber-enabled crime. It is now possible to print very robust, very powerful guns using a 3D printer, and (I imagine) you can pick up the specifications somewhere on the Dark Web.

It’s not just guns. Printers can also be used to print access (swipe) cards, and even drugs, depending on the type of printer you have.

Read this article to find out more.

Cyberwarfare

This is where a nation state attacks government or corporate systems in an attempt to bring them down. Russia has been accused of doing this by US President Joe Biden.

NB: it may be difficult to pin the blame on the Russian state, as it allegedly gets criminal organisations to carry out attacks on its behalf and then makes no effort to prosecute them.

Numerous countries have accused Russia of committing cyberwarfare against them.

Sociological explanations of cybercrime

Routine activity theory. Cohen and Felson’s (1979) routine activity theory argues that crime happens when a motivated offender meets a suitable target in the absence of a capable guardian. The internet brings millions of suitable targets within reach of any offender, anywhere in the world, while guardians are thin on the ground. This fits the right realist view of offenders as rational actors who weigh up costs and benefits: online, the chance of being caught is low and the potential rewards are high.

Globalisation. Cybercrime is a clear example of globalised crime. Attacks often originate in one country and target victims in another, which makes offenders very hard to police, because national police forces and legal systems stop at the border. See my post on globalisation and crime.

Marxism, and crimes of the powerful. Cybercrime is not only committed by lone hackers and scammers. Corporations harvest and misuse personal data, and states use cyber tools for surveillance and warfare. Pegasus and Russian cyberwarfare are examples of state crime, which supports the Marxist view that the most harmful crimes are often committed by the powerful rather than against them.

Evaluation: the problems of measuring and policing cybercrime

Most cybercrime goes unreported. Victims often don’t know they have been victims, don’t know who to report it to, or think nothing will be done. This makes police-recorded figures an especially poor measure of cybercrime, and is why the Crime Survey is the preferred source.

Victims usually know nothing about the offender. This data gap means we know far less about who commits cybercrime than about who commits street crime, so theories that explain crime through the characteristics of offenders (their class, age or subculture) are hard to test.

Policing is difficult. Cybercrime crosses borders, can be committed anonymously, and requires specialist skills to investigate. Police forces designed to patrol local streets are poorly equipped to deal with it.

The media may distort the picture. Media coverage tends to focus on dramatic hacks and cyberwarfare, while the far more common everyday frauds get less attention. See how the media represent crime.

Exam application

Cybercrime is most likely to come up as part of media and crime or globalisation and crime questions on Paper 3. It works well as evidence that:

• new media have created new opportunities for crime, and changed old crimes;
• traditional theories of crime, developed to explain street crime, struggle to explain a crime where offenders are anonymous and victims are spread across the world;
• official statistics are an unreliable measure of crime;
• crimes of the powerful, including state crime, can be committed at a distance.

Use the cyber-dependent and cyber-enabled distinction to show analysis. It helps you explain whether the internet has created genuinely new crime, or simply made old crime easier.

Crime and deviance revision notes

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my crime and deviance revision notes bundle – which contains the following:

Signposting and related posts

This post has been written primarily for students studying the crime and deviance topic, as part of the AQA’s A-Level Sociology course.

Cybercrime is part of the wider topic of media and crime, which looks at how the media represent crime, whether they cause it, and moral panics.

It also links closely to globalisation and crime, and to fraud and computer misuse as the most common crimes in the UK.

Please click here to return to the Crime and Deviance hub.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com