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Literature review: Online crime

Cybercrime has increased rapidly over the years, and wrangling debates are surrounding the issue. It has become part of everyday life. Different scholars have thoroughly examined the causes, prevalence, and potential solutions to cyber-crime. One of the most challenging issues for researchers is the increased penetration of the internet, increased use of smartphones and computers in a society with very naive users of online platforms. This is expected to lead to increased cybercrime cases. With the recent trends in online crime, most scholars in this field have dedicated their research to focus on the users of online platforms, the safety of personal information, and unauthorized privacy invasion. The review of literature from Academic sources will examine the prevalence of cybercrimes focusing on the soft targets of cyber-attack, unauthorized privacy invasion, characteristics of cybercrime victim, cybercrime trends globally and network intrusion facilitated through social engineering: which basically means using manipulation as an art figure to make a person do something or reveal confidential information. While all the sources reviewed agree that cybercrimes are a severe problem, they as well differ on the various ways to solve the problem.

According to Conteh and Schmick, most soft targets for cyber-attack are as a result of various online platforms lacking the proper capacity to protect their IT infrastructure from hackers focusing on stealing personal details of users. Conteh and Schmick also attribute the increasing number of cyber-crime cases to social engineering (Conteh & Schmick, 32). They depict that the attacks are aimed at making victims disclose private information (Conteh & Schmick, 31). Although they address the issue of attacks on innocent and naïve users, there more factors centered on the user that contributes to increased cyber-attacks. Van de Weijer et al., agrees that various qualities like extraversion, sociability, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness can contribute to vulnerability to attacks (4).

Traditional cyber-crimes relate so much to attacks done, targeting naïve users who have only fundamental skills in the use of IT infrastructure (Saridakis et al., 3). The empirical analysis shows that there exists a connection between online abuse and user’s action and sensitivities of private details security on social networks, which forms the basis of the naivety of online users (Saridakis et al.,4). From the discussion on lack of experience, skills, and judgment, the most fundamental cause for frequent cases of cyberbullying is naivety (Marwick, 3). Marwick argues that women are the most common victims of certain gender centered violations, which range from consumer profiling to video voyeurism and revenge porn (Marwick, 3).

According to Marwick, privacy invasion cases are on the rise. Marwick elaborates more on unauthorized privacy invasion due to lack of solid personal security knowledge. She discusses one massive privacy breach which occurred in August 2014 with a vast number of celebrity nudes posted to the social site called 4Chan (Saridakis et al., 3). This illustrates privacy breach due to lack of personal security knowledge (Marwick,1). Different methods are used to perpetrate privacy breach crimes including; revenge porn which involves non-consensually sharing of intimate images belonging to another person and Reddit and Geek masculinity which includes downloads done by other users without consent (Saridakis et al., 4). This is itself unauthorized, and the privacy of an individual is compromised. This is usually due to lack of a limit on the online free search and the prevalence of openly sexist annotation on the internet. Similarly, Saridakis et al., 4, explains that unauthorized privacy invasion has increased due to the use of social media sites. Illegal privacy invasion is accomplished by clicking links on social media, which further redirect users on those sites to upload photos without personal consent (Conteh & Schmich, 33). This technical ploy deceives the user to key in a username and password, which then make it easy for the attackers to gather information (Conteh & Schmich, 33). This, therefore, points to more sophisticated strategies which have led to increased unauthorized privacy invasion.

Regardless of the increase in unauthorized privacy invasion, users have deployed adequate defenses to lower their vulnerability (Conteh & Schmich, 33). They explain that hackers are getting wittier and manipulative in carrying out social engineering attacks. They emphasize that attackers can obtain crucial details which can cause damage to the individual’s reputation with others employing the use of photoshop to achieve their intentions (Conteh & Schmich, 32). They attribute an increase in these scandals to lack of successful convictions and lack of resources to undertake the process. In a similar view, Van de weijer emphasizes that personality also contributes to unauthorized access to privacy (Van de Weijer et al., 4). They indicate that users with lower levels of self-discipline are at higher risk of becoming victims of certain types of cybercrime (Van de Weijer et al., 3). A meta-analysis on the same shows that self-discipline is the most common indicator of vulnerability to cybercrime.

On various characteristics of cybercrimes, various scholars express their take on this; According to Conteh and Schmick, cybercrime falls into multiple types like phishing, pretexting, tailgating and baiting as vital strategies employed by attackers exploiting vulnerabilities of IT systems (Conteh & Schmich, 32). Some of the characteristics that they look at include; access to restricted areas, impersonation leading to unauthorized access and attempts to gain personal information such as names, addresses, and passwords (Conteh & Schmich, 32). Similarly, Marwick adds on the same stating that cyber-crime is intended to bring about harassment to women and something like revenge porn, is a contemporary issue that is both profoundly gendered and a gross violation of privacy (3). This allows a closer examination of how gender functions in a popular privacy discourse (Marwick, 3). Women are particularly susceptible to online harassment and sexual violence as a result of social Media’s networked properties, particularly women of color and queer women.