Cyber Crime and eBay

Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)

Thank you for your email received today in which you make a request for
information that Northumbria Police may hold.

We are in the process of dealing with your request and expect to revert to
you shortly. A response should be provided by 15 April 2010.

Yours sincerely

Helen Robbins

Information Compliance Unit

[NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED]

NORTHUMBRIA POLICE PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

The information contained in this message and any attachment(s) is
confidential and intended only for the attention of the named organisation
or individual to whom it is addressed. The message may contain
information that is covered by legal, professional or other privilege. No
mistake in transmission is intended to waive or compromise any such
privilege. This message has been sent over public networks and the sender
cannot be held responsible for its integrity.

If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure,
copying, distribution or action taken in reliance of the information
contained herein is strictly prohibited, and is contrary to the provisions
of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988 and of the Data Protection
Act, 1998.

Any views expressed are those of the sender and, unless specifically
stated, do not necessarily represent the view of Northumbria Police.

We cannot accept any liability for any loss or damage sustained as a
result of software viruses. It is your responsibility to carry out such
virus checking as is necessary.

If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by
e-mail at once and delete the message immediately.

For more information about Northumbria Police please visit our website -
[1]http://www.northumbria.police.uk

References

Visible links
1. http://www.northumbria.police.uk/

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

Thank you for your email dated 15 March 2010 in which you made a request
for access to certain information which may be held by Northumbria Police.

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of
access to information held by a Public Authority (including the Police),
subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

1. The number of reported crimes involving eBay and/or Paypal websites in
2007, 2008, and 2009.

2. The method used to report the crimes listed in 1)

3. The number of crimes listed in 1), which resulted in either a
conviction, a caution, or given a no further action.

4. The number of crimes listed in 1), which resulted in contact being made
to eBay and/or Paypal.

5. Details of any processes or procedures used to deal with crimes
involving eBay and/or Paypal.

In response:

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I
provide a response for your attention.

We are unable to provide the requested information.

To provide accurate information would entail a manual search of all crime
records recorded under 'Fraud' and 'Forgery' As this would require a total
of 7,457 such crimes to be viewed, we have estimated that to extract this
information would take over 18 hours, therefore Section 12 of the Freedom
of Information Act would apply. This section does not oblige a public
authority to comply with a request for information if the authority
estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the
appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00

You should consider this to be a refusal notice under section 17 of the Act
for that part of your request.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual
property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be
strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as
amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not
re-use this information for any commercial purpose.

How to complain

If you are unhappy with our decision or do not consider that we have
handled your request properly and we are unable to resolve this issue
informally, you are entitled to make a formal complaint to us under our
complaints procedure which is attached.

(See attached file: FOI Complaint Rights.doc)

If you are still unhappy after we have investigated your complaint and
reported to you the outcome, you may complain directly to the Information
Commissioner’s Office and request that they investigate to ascertain
whether we have dealt with your request in accordance with the Act.

Yours sincerely

Michael Cleugh
Data Protection and Disclosure Advisor
Direct Dial: 01661 869389

[NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED]
NORTHUMBRIA POLICE PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

The information contained in this message and any attachment(s) is confidential and intended only for the attention of the named organisation or individual to whom it is addressed. The message may contain information that is covered by legal, professional or other privilege. No mistake in transmission is intended to waive or compromise any such privilege. This message has been sent over public networks and the sender cannot be held responsible for its integrity.

If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or action taken in reliance of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited, and is contrary to the provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988 and of the Data Protection Act, 1998.

Any views expressed are those of the sender and, unless specifically stated, do not necessarily represent the view of Northumbria Police.

We cannot accept any liability for any loss or damage sustained as a result of software viruses. It is your responsibility to carry out such virus checking as is necessary.

If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by e-mail at once and delete the message immediately.

For more information about Northumbria Police please visit our website - http://www.northumbria.police.uk

We acknowledge receipt of your request for an internal review of the
response you received in relation to the above mentioned Freedom Of
Information request.

We will review the response and provide you with a reply in due course.
Yours sincerely

Helen Robbins

Information Compliance Unit
[NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED]

NORTHUMBRIA POLICE PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

The information contained in this message and any attachment(s) is
confidential and intended only for the attention of the named organisation
or individual to whom it is addressed. The message may contain
information that is covered by legal, professional or other privilege. No
mistake in transmission is intended to waive or compromise any such
privilege. This message has been sent over public networks and the sender
cannot be held responsible for its integrity.

If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure,
copying, distribution or action taken in reliance of the information
contained herein is strictly prohibited, and is contrary to the provisions
of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988 and of the Data Protection
Act, 1998.

Any views expressed are those of the sender and, unless specifically
stated, do not necessarily represent the view of Northumbria Police.

We cannot accept any liability for any loss or damage sustained as a
result of software viruses. It is your responsibility to carry out such
virus checking as is necessary.

If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by
e-mail at once and delete the message immediately.

For more information about Northumbria Police please visit our website -
[1]http://www.northumbria.police.uk

References

Visible links
1. http://www.northumbria.police.uk/

Dear Mr Hedley

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

Thank you for your e-mail dated 1st April 2010 in which you requested a
review of the response to your request for access to certain information
which may be held by Northumbria Police.

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of
access to information held by a Public Authority (including the Police),
subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:
“1. The number of reported crimes involving eBay and/or Paypal
websites in 2007, 2008, and 2009.

2. The method used to report the crimes listed in 1)

3. The number of crimes listed in 1), which resulted in either a
conviction, a caution, or given a no further action.

4. The number of crimes listed in 1), which resulted in contact being
made to eBay and/or Paypal.

5. Details of any processes or procedures used to deal with crimes
involving eBay and/or Paypal.”

Your request for review asked:

“I am writing to request an internal review of Northumbria Police's
handling of my FOI request 'Cyber Crime and eBay'.

I'm interested to know how the time and cost of handling this request
has been calculated.

I find it hard to believe that Northumbria Police does not have the
technology, that would allow a wild-card search on the crime
database. A search could be performed by your Database Administrator
(DBA), under the categories of 'Fraud' and 'Forgery',
containing the phrase '*PayPal*' and/or '*eBay*'.

I estimate that this whole process would take no longer than an hour.
From your DBA writing the query, to executing the query, and
to exporting the results. The filtered list of crimes could then be
manually searched.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available
on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cy... brg”

In order to review the original response given to you, I have liaised
further with the relevant department that carried out the investigation
into your request. As a result I have been further advised that despite
your beliefs and estimations, it is not possible to carry out a wild-card
search using the phrases you provided.

The force is able to identify the total number of fraud and forgery cases,
within the modus operandi field there are search criteria available from a
predefined list only. This list does not contain the key phrase “paypal”
and/or “ebay” and there is no free format search function. Therefore each
crime would have to be viewed individually in order to establish if it has
involved either paypal or ebay.

As stated in our original response, there were a total of 7,457 crimes that
would fall into the Fraud and Forgery category. As it cannot be determined
if each or any of these crimes involved paypal or ebay, each would require
manual review to try to establish whether any would fall into the
parameters of your request. Even at a modest estimate of 5 minutes per
record, this search and extraction would take in excess of 600 hours,
therefore section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act would apply. This
section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for
information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the
request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00
The exemption is therefore upheld.

This concludes my internal review into your request under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of this
review then it remains open to you to refer this matter to the Information
Commissioner at the following address:

The Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Hayley Morrison
Disclosure Section Manager
NORTHUMBRIA POLICE PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

The information contained in this message and any attachment(s) is confidential and intended only for the attention of the named organisation or individual to whom it is addressed. The message may contain information that is covered by legal, professional or other privilege. No mistake in transmission is intended to waive or compromise any such privilege. This message has been sent over public networks and the sender cannot be held responsible for its integrity.

If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or action taken in reliance of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited, and is contrary to the provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988 and of the Data Protection Act, 1998.

Any views expressed are those of the sender and, unless specifically stated, do not necessarily represent the view of Northumbria Police.

We cannot accept any liability for any loss or damage sustained as a result of software viruses. It is your responsibility to carry out such virus checking as is necessary.

If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by e-mail at once and delete the message immediately.

For more information about Northumbria Police please visit our website - http://www.northumbria.police.uk