2022/25026 - Online impersonations on social media

REQUEST

Please may you provide me with the following information:

1) Number of reports of online impersonations on social media in the last three years. If possible, could you break this down by social media platform in which an impersonation case has taken place?

2) Of these reported incidents, how many have resulted in a police investigation?

Please provide the information in an electronic format.

RESPONSE

1) Number of reports of online impersonations on social media in the last three years. If possible, could you break this down by social media platform in which an impersonation case has taken place?

There is no specific offence title for online impersonation for offences to be filtered on. Therefore, a keyword search was conducted in crime summaries and open text using the following terms:

• “Impersonation”
• “impersonate”
• “impersonating”

From the results of this keyword search, a manual trawl was then completed to identify the relevant offences and incidents. This data is from 2018 – 2021. There were a total of 7 offences and 3 incidents during this time period. These have been broken down by platform;

2) Of these reported incidents, how many have resulted in a police investigation? Please provide the information in an electronic format.

Of the 7 offences recorded, 6 were at one point identified as being ‘under investigation’. Of the 3 incidents recorded, 1 was crimed and was identified as being under instigation at one point. The other two incidents would not have gone through an investigation as these were not crimed.