Police stats suggest Facebook becoming hotbed of crime

by Steven Mostyn - Dec 15 2010, 09:16

Maintaining today’s focus on tech-related crime, statistics spread across multiple police forces in the UK suggest that criminal activity via Facebook is quickly spiralling out of control.

Including figures plucked from 16 different contributing police chiefs, the numbers show that more than 100,000 crimes have been committed on the world’s biggest social network in the last five years.

Furthermore, some 7,545 emergency calls related to Facebook have been made to the police since January of 2010, which is a significant increase from the 1,411 calls received in 2005 when the site’s popularity was snowballing.

“While there is a correlation between Facebook’s growing size and the number of calls, there is no evidence to suggest that the use of Facebook was the cause or carrier of a criminal act in any of the phone calls referenced,” a Facebook spokesman commented in a Daily Mail report.

Taking a closer look at the content of the police calls, Facebook has been home to a variety of offences connected to fraud, intimidation, bullying, harassment, acts of terrorism, illegal firearms, and even the sexual grooming of children.

Figures offered up by Cambridgeshire police show they have received 1,640 crimes on Facebook in 2010, which is a massive leap of 7,400 percent when compared to the mere 22 calls made in 2007.

The police crime stats were acquired through the Freedom of Information Act.

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