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Task 2 · Two-part question · Crime

Why online fraud keeps growing

Three answers give much the same security advice. Only the band 9 derives it from the economics of the crime, which is why its measures are chosen rather than remembered.

The question

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write about the following topic. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

Fraud committed over the internet has increased significantly in recent years. Why has this type of crime become so common? What can individuals do to protect themselves?

A 250-word discursive essay — the half of the paper that carries two thirds of the marks. This prompt is original, written in the standard format for teaching purposes — it is not taken from any past paper.

What separates the three answers

All three recommend sensible precautions; only the band 9 explains that the crime is attempted at industrial volume, which reframes the goal from being uncrackable to being more expensive to attack than the next person on the list.

The three answers

Band 6.5

254 words (the task asks for at least 250)

The answer works. It addresses the task, the reader follows it, and the meaning survives — but ideas stay general, linking is mechanical, wording repeats, and small errors are visible throughout.

The answer

In the last years, the crimes on the internet like the fraud have increased a lot in all the world. This is a serious problem for everybody who uses the internet. In this essay I will discuss the reasons of this increasing and I will give some advices for the people to protect themselves3.

The first reason is that today everybody does everything online. We buy the things online, we pay the bills online and we put all our personal informations on the social media. So the criminals have many opportunities and they can find a lot of data about us very easy4. Another reason is that this crime is very safe for the criminal.2 He can sit in one country and steal the money from a person who lives in another country, and the police can not catch him because it is very difficult to work between the different countries. Also, many old people do not understand the technology very well, so they are easy victims. The criminals send them an email or a message from a fake bank and they believe it.

For protecting themselves, people should use strong passwords and they should never click on a strange link.1 Also they should not give their bank information to anybody on the phone. It is also good to change the password sometimes.

In conclusion, the online fraud is increasing because our life is online and because the criminals can not be caught easily, and people must be more careful to avoid this problem.

What an examiner notices

  1. 1. Task response

    “For protecting themselves, people should use strong passwords and they should never click on a strange link.”

    The second question opens with three received instructions and no reasoning. Advice everyone has already heard, offered without a mechanism, is not a developed answer.

  2. 2. Coherence and cohesion

    “Another reason is that this crime is very safe for the criminal.”

    The third of three distinct causes packed into one paragraph, none of which is given its own space. Paragraphing that follows the argument would separate them.

  3. 3. Lexical resource

    “I will give some advices for the people to protect themselves”

    'Advice' is uncountable, and 'informations' repeats the same error a paragraph later. Two identical countability slips signal an unstable grasp of the noun system.

  4. 4. Grammatical range and accuracy

    “they can find a lot of data about us very easy”

    An adjective where 'easily' is needed. Small, systematic and repeated across this writer's work — a defining feature of the band rather than a one-off.

One honest caveat

Band labels here describe what each piece of writing demonstrates against the four published assessment areas, paraphrased in plain language. They are teaching illustrations produced for this site, not official material, and no sample has been marked by a test provider. Real scripts are marked whole; two answers with the same label can still look quite different from each other, and nothing on this page can promise anyone a particular result.

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