London is Britain's hacking danger zone, according to retailer GAME. The capital saw 4,348 reported hacking cases in the year up to September, that cost victims a total of £4,031.

Criminals targeted citizens through social media and email, personal computers and digital extortion techniques, according to the research.

The West Midlands region was the second worst affected area, with 1,993 cases in the past 12 months and £727,100 lost to cyber criminals. The South East region was third in the index, where residents lost £534,900.

Residents of Northern Ireland were subjected to 303 cases with a loss of £14,133 - while Scotland only lost £606 across 355 cases.

The Isle of Man and Guernsey were the safest places for hacks in financial terms. While the two islands had a combined 14 hacking cases over the year, not a single penny was lost by the victims.

The statistics showed there was a massive increase in hacks as the UK as a whole went into lockdown. April saw an 87.5 per cent increase in reported cases, with 3,000 hacks compared to 1,600 in March.

Since that period though the number of total hacks has steadily come down, and the September figure of 1,500 was roughly the same as September 2019.

All the figures used by GAME were gathered from Action Fraud and Regional Police Forces.

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