More than 70,000 Havering residents have had their personal details stolen and put up for sale on the “dark web” by criminals.

A search of Havering postcodes by due diligence company the C6 Intelligence Group uncovered 70,912 records available, 39,378 of which were stolen in 2012 when the group has confirmed there were a large number of breaches.

But, the total number of people affected is expected to be much higher because the information held on many will not include their postcode and so not appear with this search system.

Darren Innes, chief executive of C6 Intelligence Group, said the figure could comfortably be increased by 30-40 per cent.

A huge spike in information thefts has been recorded in 2014 and C6 Intelligence Group has said 20 million of the 36 million personal passwords it has uncovered were stolen this year.

Mr Innes said: “We currently have over 400 million compromised identities on record, but in the last two months we’ve seen an increase of over 5,000pc in the number of compromised identities going up for sale on the dark web daily. From, on average 13,000 a day to about 658,000.”

On average nine pieces of information on each person targeted have been offered up for sale.

The credit, debit or loyalty card numbers of 2,653 people from Havering are available, along with the email addresses and passwords of 2,548.

Data can be sold for anything from two cents to $50.

Mr Innes said: “The primary thing that people can do and the most important thing is not have the same email address for more than one account. People should regularly change their passwords, never have the same password for more than one account, check bank statements for anything untoward and regularly check our website for free to see if you have been compromised.”

C6 Intelligence Groups offers a free service to check if your details have been compromised at hasmyidenitybeenstolen.com

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