Antivirus hid more than 9,000 'cybercrime' reports from UK cops, says watchdog Just one of Britain's 43 police forces treats online crime as a priority – while the Action Fraud organisation managed to withhold 9,000 so-called cyber-crime reports from cops thanks to badly configured antivirus on its reporting portal, according to a government watchdog. Software intended to screen reports about online …
The biggest is The Metropolitan Police, that cover the rest of london, followed by Police Scotland, PS NI, West Midlands, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, then Thames Valley, followed by Merseyside, Kent and Northumbria rounding out the top 10.
City of London Police only cover the square mile and are the smallest force in the country
They just happen to run the National Fraud Unit (obvs. cause of the City,) which now includes the national Cyber crime Unit.
Action Fraud are supposed to be improving, and a report to them should instigate (eventually) a contact from your local force's Cyber unit, but I havent seen the improvement yet.
Back in the days when I used to file abuse reports with registrars and ISPs it was amazing how many of them had anti-spam/AV protection on their abuse address which would stop me sending the evidence, without which they'd just reject the report.. I used to wonder if they were just dumb or didn't want to know. A mixture of both, I expect. I bet not much has changed..
"it was amazing how many of them had anti-spam/AV protection on their abuse address which would stop me sending the evidence"
Indeed.
I've had a few of my comments rejected by El Reg describing malware because they contained symbols and paths.
The web browser extension No Script will sometimes flag my web searches that may appear as cross site scripting as well.
A good test to make sure your NoScript extension is working is to try and do a DuckDuckGo search using some of the examples shown at OWASP:
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-site_Scripting_(XSS)
Entering any of the XSS examples should make NoScript throw a warning pop-up regarding XSS as long as you check the box in NoScript's advanced settings to "Sanitize cross-site suspicious requests".
It's almost as if someone called Bobby'); DROP TABLE reports; filled in a cyber report :D
Considering the police don't turn up for burglaries and other crimes these days, it amazes me that they will spend a lot of time and effort investigating when someone calls someone else a name on Facebook. Must be easy stats for the books....
I had the constabulary visit recently because I took three pictures of tree's/landscape in the park. Someone thought that was suspicious, despite there being no one being within view of the camera, followed me back to my car and reported my number plate. Despite no crime reported and taking pictures is perfectly legal as well as me having no previous for anything whatsoever, they thought it was worth sending two coppers to my door to question me.
On top of that, now my name is in the Police National Database until im 100 years old with that info so if for instance some young jogger in the park claims someone was taking photos of them, without any other info, a search for camera/photos and that park and i'm now number one suspect if they have no other info.
Self reported non-crimes and the police are now firmly in my bad books. Need a filter for 'real crimes' (c)
Now to find some police report forms with the EICAR string ready to paste in....j/k ;)
Back in the day plod were useless at investigating fraud of the non IT sort (had someone register a loan in my name using an address I used to live at - either an old "flatmate" or one of their associates the most likely though you never can discount some dodgy landlords)
Plod were worse than useless (bank not much better) - I think they don't fancy fraud as its a lot more time & effort than lots of other crime. and so not good for clear up stats
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
