Money stolen by criminals hacking social media accounts and emails has risen over 400% over the past year, according to the Report Fraud service run by the City of London Police.
The losses reached £6.3 million from social media and email hacking in the 2025–26 financial year, up from £1.2 million in 2024–25.
These hacks accounted for 69% of all cybercrime reports over the 12 months at 44,355, a 34% increase on the previous year.
A common pattern across cases is scammers hijacking people’s accounts and using their identity to sell fake event tickets to their contact list of friends and family, while other cases were part of the ‘Hi mum’ scam, where a criminal pretends to be their child or family member in an emergency situation that urgently needs cash over text messages and WhatsApp.
Andrew Bud, Founder and CEO of iProov, said: “With online fraud now accounting for almost half of all crime in the UK, it’s becoming ever clearer that a lack of accountability is encouraging fraudsters to get away with using every channel they can and today’s news shows that social media is one of the most potent. Linking verified identities to online accounts, in a way fraudsters can’t fool with free or cheap deepfake toolkits, is one way to protect members of the public. Social media companies have already begun to move in this direction.”
“These scams can occur in one of two ways: either the crook sets up an account in the name of someone else that consumers trust, like a brand or a friend and that can be stopped by solid identity verification. Or the crooks can try to take over a genuine, trusted account by claiming to have forgotten their password and get it reset. This kind of impersonation fraud can be prevented and increasingly is, by the use of strong, deepfake-resistant biometric verification.”
To help people protect their digital accounts, Report Fraud is launching an awareness campaign urging the public to switch to passkeys that use device and biometrics to authenticate them. These passkeys are harder to hack than a traditional password.
Ch Supt Amanda Wolf, Head of Report Fraud Operations, said: “For most people, being hacked isn’t just a cyber issue – it’s personal. It can leave victims locked out of important accounts, worried about what information has been accessed and concerned that criminals may use their identity to target others.”
