Lecture 5: Cybercrime

Question 1

Levels of impact of cyber crime

Answer 1

• Internet as tool to sustain harmful activity e.g. terrorism
• Internet as transnational environment that provides new opportunities for existing harmful activities
• Internet has opened up new forms of virtual activates e.g. virtual theft

Question 2

Online crime taxonomy

Answer 2

4 broad areas of cyber-crime:

• Cyber-trespass
• Cyber-deception
• Cyber-pornography
• Cyber-violence

Question 3

Online crime taxonomy: cyber-trespass

Answer 3

• When you cross border with unauthorised access online
• Young (1995) explains why people would cyber-trespass:
• -> Utopians = hack into things to show greater good of world
• -> Cyberpunks = aggressively anti-establishment and cause targeted harm
• -> Cyber-spies and cyber terrorists = need to be expert crackers to gain access to sites

Question 4

Social identity theory for cyber-cyber-tresspass

Answer 4

• Woo and Hyung-jin (2004)
• Role of political vs personal motivations in web defacement (malicious change to website appearance)
• 462 defaced sites content analysis
• -> 70% = prank
• -> 30% = political motive
• -> Media assumption of lonely hacker incorrect
• ->Most people wanted there reasons for hacking known
• -> Hacking for political motives most aggressive

Question 5

Cyber-deception/theft

Answer 5

• Acquisition harm caused in cyberspace
• Most info stolen for financial gain
• Virtual product theft = watching something with someone else’s login or illegally download
• ->Uses and gratifications theory

-Data theft

• Identity theft
• -> Mass media says it more prominent but actually most prominent is counterfeiting (internet used to expand offline businesses) and intellectual property rights (owners rights threatened by release into public domain)
• ->Routine activity theory = explains risk of identity theft
• ->Based on what individuals routinely do on the web
• -> Look at risk and costs of behaviour online and what people do routinely online, not caught which then becomes habitual behaviour

Question 6

Study of routine activity theory

Answer 6

• Reyns (2011)
• 5985 responses from British Crime Survey analysed
• Individuals using internet for banking/emails/messaging 50% more likely to be victims of theft
• Online shopping/downloading increases theft risk by 30%
• Most vulnerable people are males, high earners, old

Question 7

Cyber-pornography/obscenity

Answer 7

• Publication of sexually expressive materials within cyberspace
• Porn initially used to draw men to internet = boosted virtual economy
• Not illegal but sharing sexually explicit material through coercion/no consent

Gerard (2010)

• 36 offenders arrested for using child pornography online
• 49% aware that acts were illegal
• 7 ppts blamed depression but no evidence of it
• Dictated by uses and gratifications theory

Question 8

Child pornography online - 4 groups

Answer 8

• 4 groups of uses who offend online for different reasons
• Periodically prurient offenders = impulsive, curious, sporadic activity and not related to specific interests in children
• Fantasy-alone offenders = access trade images to fuel sexual interests but no known history of contact sexual offending
• Direct victimisation offenders = use online technology as part of contact and non-contact sexual offending
• Commercial exploitation offenders = criminally-minded, produce and trade images to make money

Question 9

The integrated theory of sexual offending for pornography

Answer 9

• Ward and Beech (2006)
• Underlying, psychological motivation in order to engage in criminal sexual behaviour online
• To do with genetics –> motivates you to carry out activity online
• Develop clinical symptoms and can only satisfy them is to use internet to gratify them –> no evidence people that to do this transfer to criminal behaviour offline
• Deviant sexual arousal comes from combination of deficits in 3 neuropsychological systems:
• ->Motivational/emotional system
• -> Action selection and control system
• -> Perception and memory system
• Compromised function of mechanisms leads to:
• -> Failures in self-regulatory control
• -> Social problems
• -> Anti-social thinking patterns
• -> Deviant sexual internet/arousal patterns

Question 10

Cyber-violence

Answer 10

• Impact of cyber-activities on another person or group

- Largest range of behaviours include stalking, bullying, harrasment and hate speech

Question 11

Personality correlates of cyber violence

Answer 11

• Ang and Goh (2010)
• According to reduced social cues theory lack of social cues deregulates online behaviour
• 2 cognitive processes that can be linked to cyber bullying:
• -> Cognitive empathy = ability to understand emotions of others
• -> Affective empathy = ability to experience and share emotions of others
• Both play role in bullying

Question 12

Other factors influence cyber bullying

Answer 12

Anonymity:

• Perpetrators use screen names
• But people rarely anonymous online

Infinite audience:
-More severe because larger audience

Permanence

Power and reinforcement:
-Cant see pain they have caused so power reduced

Repetition:
-Has to be repetitive

Reinforcement:

• Cyber bullies not reinforced as delayed reaction from victim
• BUT wait might induce excitement and anticipation but not evidence

Question 13

Global and societal impact of cyber bulling

Answer 13

• Not localised
• Group bullying online largely ignored by research
• Research tends to focus on local school age children and why victims become victims

Question 14

Cybercrime research difficulties

Answer 14

• Difficult to categorise –> need to be separated out more

- Few years of online crime = lack of research