Number of cyber extortion incidents in Canada 2014-2023

The source adds the following information: "A criminal incident may be comprised of multiple violations of the law. For the analysis of cyber-related violations, one distinct violation within the incident was identified as the 'cybercrime violation'. The cybercrime violation represents the specific criminal violation within an incident in which a computer or the internet was the target of the crime, or the instrument used to commit the crime. For the majority of incidents, the cybercrime violation and the most serious violation were the same.
The category "Luring a child via a computer" also includes the UCR code 1371 "Agreement or Arrangement- sexual offences against a child".
On March 9, 2015, Bill C-13, Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, came into effect. As a result of this, a new offence was added to the Criminal Code: non-consensual distribution of intimate images. It also clarified that Criminal Code offences of harassing / indecent communications can be committed by any means of communication. Police services are able to utilize these amendments as their Records Management Systems have been updated as a result.
Due to the complexity of child pornography incidents, the data likely reflect the number of active or closed investigations for the year rather than the total number of incidents reported to police.
Historically, police services reported all child pornography offences under a single combined violation code, of which the majority of the offences were possessing child pornography. In early 2016, the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR) was modified to allow police to report making and distributing child pornography separately from other child pornography offences (for example, possession and accessing child pornography). These data should therefore be interpreted with caution.
"Other violations" consists of non-Criminal code offences, including traffic violations, drug violations, and other federal statute violations." Adapted from Statistics Canada, Statistics Canada, 2014 to 2022. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.