Believe it or not, this is the fortieth edition of Hingston’s Law and I thought I would take a moment to step back and look at the changes that have happened over the years.

Probably the biggest changes involve computers, communications and paying by plastic. When I was at university, I was taken to be shown the then state of the art computer used by Edinburgh City council just for the administration of rates. This monster took up the whole of a large room. The small box sitting on my desk today could do the same job. As a student I watched with bated breath and awe the first men landing on the moon. Today my mobile phone has greater computing power than that lunar landing module. It is only a few years ago that mobile phones were the size of a brick and now they are small enough to be all too easily mislaid. Where we once wrote letters and sent telegrams, now we text or e-mail without a thought, and frequently without the second thought that should have been taken.

With computers has come the web. Internet browsing, chat rooms and shopping from the comfort of our homes are familiar to us all. Perhaps it is because they are so familiar and that it is from home, people let down their guard and fall victim to new variations on old crimes. The old adage, that, if it is too good to be true, it isn’t true, is ignored. Why are you being offered this “investment opportunity” paying several times more than you can get elsewhere? Why? Because it isn’t true and is simply an old fashioned fraud dressed up in new clothing. Why do people happily give out confidential information just because they have received an e-mail asking for it? Would they be so willing if approached by some stranger in the street and asked the same? This phishing is also just another fraud.

Paedophilia and pornography have always existed and have not been created by modern communications, but they have been made more difficult to monitor and control, requiring parents to keep the guard up in the home as well as outside.

When I started, payroll robberies were not uncommon. Today it would not be worth the robber’s time as there can be few employees being paid weekly in cash. Even cheques are being used less frequently so much so that one major printer of chequebooks has closed down. Instead everything is paid for using the ubiquitous plastic. Even they are being cloned or stolen and now we have chip and pin. I watch with horror the number of people, who, having proffered the card, then consult a piece of paper kept in the same holder for the pin number. Have they no idea just how quickly accounts can be emptied? It’s just another version of old fashioned theft.

What is new is identity theft, which has moved from fiction to all to real reality. It has only become possible because of the way in which we live and communicate now. One element of this is cloning vehicle registration numbers and there have been quite a number of people much surprised to be told they were due payment of the London congestion charge or a speeding ticket. However this too is simply fraud in a new disguise.