The British government has decided to fully commit to the idea of setting up a centralised police force that is to deal with online crime, it has been reported.

It has been noted that excluding child-related crime such as pornography, 80 to 90 per cent of crime on the internet is related to fraud, and as such the newly-proposed Police Central E-crime Unit (PCEU) will work in tandem with the National Fraud Reporting Centre.

E-crime minister Vernon Coaker said the service would also play a "vital role" in assisting police forces across the country in improving the skills and abilities needed to "clamp down" on e-crime.

He continued: "It is important that we stay one step ahead of criminals who increasingly use sophisticated computer networks and the internet to commit and facilitate crime."

One man in Australia, Ralph Thomason, was recently conned out of $20,000 (£8,970) in an online fraud case after discovering his online female romance was actually a Nigerian man.

More than half of small businesses (53%) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support, London based Connect conducted the research in 2007.