Cybercrime: The Thrill of the Game, the Anonymity, and the Opportunities Free Essay Example

Any discussion about online anonymity is bound to be a complex one, especially in the age of cybercrime and VPNs. Tor, as the gateway to the dark web, is the most famous anonymizing tool for cybercriminals (Jardine, 2015). Anonymity is the use of alternate identities, pseudonym, to carry out activities that will not affect other identities, such as creating multiple social media profiles to show different identities. The concept of anonymity is not a new thing as it allows individuals space to explore other parts of their identities. This is a good thing because it allows people to know themselves better. However, without the threat of consequences, anonymity also brings out the worst in some people, and given the virtual anonymity provided by internet services like the tor network, a new type of crime, cybercrime, has been on the rise (Citron, 2014). Such cybercrimes include bullying, hate crime, and identity theft, among others (Lusthaus & Varese, 2017; Broadhurst et al., 2018; Sarre et al., 2018). Besides, this is a list of known cybercrimes as hackers come up with new ones every day.

Under the thrill of anonymity and opportunism, individuals go on cybercrime sprees with little fear of the consequences (Poulsen, 2011). According to Cooper (2015), the rate of growth of cybercrime has been on the rise, especially social engineering-based crimes, which made up almost half of all the reported cybercrimes in 2015. In a study looking into the rate that cybercrime is growing, Cybersecurity Ventures predicted that by 2021, cybercrime would have cost the world $6 trillion, a doubling from $3 trillion in the past six years (Morgan, 2020). This is only the economic cost. The social and political implications are still unknown.

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It is therefore essential to understand how the thrill of the game, the virtual anonymity (provided by pseudonyms, products and services like VPNs, and infrastructure like the tor network that guarantee anonymity) and opportunism contribute to why individuals will engage in cybercrime. As cybercrimes are a recent occurrence, understanding this complex interplay will go a long way to update the current justice system as it is woefully inadequate to handle the cases. The insight gained from this will be helpful in formulating policies that will not only discourage cybercrime but also make the cybercriminals empathize with their victims. Even the morality has no defense mechanism against cybercrime as instead of rebuking cybercrime and hacking, cybercriminals, like Max Butler, are often praised and seen in a positive light (Poulsen, 2011).

This is important because the upcoming generations will continue to rely on the internet for almost every aspect of their lives. Informing them of the risks of using the internet while creating a culture where cybercrime is morally reprehensible will go a long way to prevent future cybercrimes. Therefore, this paper is a proposal that aims to provide insight into the three aspects of cybercrime from a human behavior perspective; anonymity, thrill, and opportunity. It aims to understand the following research question.

Does the thrill of the game, being anonymous, and opportunism contribute to why someone participates in cybercrime?

To answer the research question, the following hypotheses are posited.

H 1. The younger generations are more vulnerable to cybercrime, both as victims and cybercriminals.

H 2. Being anonymous online is a major contributor towards the decision to engaging in cybercrime.

Literature Review

Young et al. (2007) established that hackers continued their illegal activities because the judicial system did not punish them severely enough to discourage them, not to mention the low likelihood of being caught. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that traditional criminal profiling helps 77% of the times with traditional crimes and is totally ineffective against cybercrime (Zamora, 2018), excluding the high moral disengagement (Chan & Janjarasjit, 2019; Saulnier, 2019). Therefore, when an individual is virtually guaranteed anonymity, and hence immunity from any consequences, the thrill for the activity, and the knowledge to not only identify an opportunity but to take advantage, few things will prevent them from utilizing it for their selfish ends. This is part of the central question being asked in this paper. Answering it will first require looking into the motivation behind cybercrime.

According to a study conducted by the National Crime Agency in 2017, over 60% of all cybercriminals start at the age of 16 (Zamora, 2018). What was surprising from the study was that these young upstarts do not engage in cybercrime because they envision a career in a crime or for any other motive. They simply do it because they can, especially when they have access to technology and the knowledge to use and take advantage of it. For rookies, the knowledge is freely available on the internet. These findings are similar to what Young et al. (2007) found when surveying individuals who proclaimed they were hackers and established that for most of them, hacking and cybercrime did not start as a criminal endeavor but something they did because they could. The fact that their actions did not have any direct victims did not help to bring morality into the picture.

The other motivation that drives individuals to commit cybercrime is the desire to learn and expand one's skill set. In the Nuix Black Market Report 2018, it was established that 86% of all interviewed hackers hacked in order to learn (Lipika, 2018). This curiosity, while driving them to improve their skills, would make them desire to want to do bigger things and, in the end, become cybercriminals (Zamora, 2018). In this case, the individuals did start out as hackers (which is an innocent profession and not to be confused with cybercrime) but ended up testing and applying their skills in real life and smoothly transition to be cybercriminals. Other motivations for cybercrime include financial benefits, ego, the need for recognition, and acting out as an emotional coping mechanism (Zamora, 2018). These, however, are some of the known motivations and do not include cybercrimes committed at the behest of nation states.

Therefore, to get into the mind of a hacker and cybercriminal, different criminological and psychological theories have been posited (Stalans & Donner, 2018). The rational choice theory, for example, posits that all individuals are rational beings and will only take actions after doing a cost-benefit analysis (Benson et al., 2020). A cybercriminal might, therefore, analyze the cost of cybercrime (incarceration) against the perceived benefits, financial, emotional, or personal and decide to commit the crime because the likelihood of being caught and punished is low.

On the other hand, the Routine activities theory focuses on how essential an opportunity to commit a crime is to a cybercriminal (Williams, 2016). This is because the opportunity is the window through which the cybercriminal gets to take action. Besides, it is not like there are no laws that punish cybercrime. It's just that, unlike laws that punish homicide, the laws that punish cybercrime are low on the cybercriminal's list of concerns. This is explained by Hirschi's social control theory which posits that the likelihood of an individual to violate a law is dictated by the individual's attachment to society as compared to the punishment should they get caught (Benson et al., 2020).

To this effect, cybercrime, especially hacking has been researched extensively from the perspective of what motivates a cybercriminal and the role the criminal justice system plays in punishing cybercrime among other independent factors. What is missing from the research is how the thrill of cybercrime, opportunity, and anonymity come together to influence an individual to commit cybercrimes. This is the main research question being asked in this paper. This is the knowledge gap that this paper aims to fill. In the end, a policy implementation strategy and intervention will be recommended from the findings.

Methods

Sampling

The sample for this study will include convicted cybercriminals as well as past and present victims of cybercrime from all demographics. These potential participants will be selected from social networks, support pages for cybersecurity victims, and online groups working to combat cybercrime. The offenders will be selected from the public records, both currently serving their sentences (community service or prisons) and those who are out. However, to participate in the study, the potential participants will be selected using a probability sampling method. This will ensure that the selected sample is representative of the population. Besides, as the research is not focusing on a specific demographic, probability sampling will ensure that all groups are represented. The weakness of this method is that it will require a larger sample size so that the final research sample will be representative of the population.

Data Collection

Data will be collected using online surveys. This will include qualitative as well as quantitative data. Qualitative data will inform on the participant's demographic data as well as their past encounters with cybercrime, while qualitative data will inform on their opinions on cybercrime and how policies should be implemented to solve the problem. To reach out to as many participants as possible, the online surveys will be open for three months. In this manner, all participants will be informed of the deadlines to participate in the first study. Additionally, after three months, the survey can be left open to other participants. In this manner, the researchers can go back to look into the data collected after a year or two, analyze it, and compare the findings with the first study. This way, the validity of the findings from this study can be improved, while more insight is gained from a larger data set.

Conceptualization of Variables

For this study, the independent variables include awareness of the risks of using the internet, awareness of the risk mitigation strategies, the ethics of cybersecurity, and the technologies used to carry out cyberattacks. The other independent variables include how the participants use these tools. The dependent variable here is their susceptibility to the thrill, anonymity, and opportunities towards committing cybercrimes. These variables will be measured on a modified Likert type scale. To ensure reliability and validity of the data, the larger sample size will be used such that the findings will regress to the mean, which is the most common indicator of the factor or behavior that is desired. This is because for a given demographic, such as teenagers, asking them a question like "Have you ever committed a cybercrime?" will make some of them provide the wrong response but by having a large sample size, the number of incorrect responses will not affect the mean.

Operationalization of Variables

The variables and survey questions will be rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1=Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Neither Agree, 4=Agree, 5=Strongly Agree) and some open-ended questions. Not only will this help to quantify qualitative data and information, but it will also help to seek clarifications with the open-ended questions. Asking a survey question like "I have multiple accounts that reflect the online identities that I use for different purposes" can be followed up with a question like "I believe that VPNs, the tor network, and other anonymizing features of online products were built to give me freedom on the internet, including freedom and protection to commit cybercrimes." Not only will this information on the participant's awareness of cybercrime and how to protect themselves but also the freedom and ability to commit cybercrimes.

Human Subject Protections

Harm to Participants

This study will be conducted online, and no physical harm will be met upon the participants. All data collected, including demographic profiles that include personally identifiable information, will be coded and kept in the strictest confidentiality such that no harm will come to the participants.

Voluntary Participation

All research participants will take part in the study voluntarily. No threats or incentives (financial or otherwise) will be used to enlist their participation in the study. Participants will also be free to leave the study at any time, out of their volition without any consequences from the research team.

Anonymity/Confidentiality

To keep the participants anonymous and keep the data collected confidential, all personally identifiable information will be coded with alphanumeric codes. Only the researchers will be allowed to see and use this coded data. To show it to other unauthorized individuals or publish the information, the researchers will first have to obtain consent from the participant.

Deception

No form of deception, direct or indirect, will be used at any stage of the study.

Informed Consent

All participants of this study will only take part after providing their informed consent. This includes acknowledging that they understand the purpose of the study, its objectives, their role, and expectations in it. Should they decide to withdraw from the study, they will be informed to do so before a given date and communicate with the researchers through a specified contacting method so that their data will not be used in the study. Taking part in the research will imply giving consent.

Withholding Desirable Treatments

As this is a criminology research paper and not a medical study, no desirable treatments will be withheld from the participants. All participants will be treated equally, and should they have specific or special requests before and when taking part in the study, they will be given a contacting method such that they can inform the research team and gain confirmation.

Special Populations

In this study, special populations will be the cybercriminals who voluntarily take part in the research and would like to be protected. All personally identifiable information from them will be strictly eyes only for the authorized researchers only. After completing the study, all documentation and evidence of their participation in the study will be destroyed.

Statistical Analysis

Qualitative and quantitative data collected in the study will be analyzed using correlations to test for significance. A simple correlation test, for example, is between the usage of privacy protection tools and the participant's self-reported past as a cybercriminal. This will inform on the likelihood that the anonymity provided by the tools increases the chances an individual commits a cybercrime. Another demographic correlation can be made to determine the most vulnerable population to the thrill, anonymity, and opportunism of cybercrime.

Limitations

Despite the planned large sample size, the findings of this research will be limited by the sample size as it will not be representative of the whole population. This was countered in the research design by keeping the data collected through the online survey open and going back to analyze the newly collected data to validate the findings further. The other limitation for the findings in this research is that there is no inherent mechanism to weed out incorrect responses that would lead to the over or underestimation of the real findings in the data analysis. By assuming that a majority of the participants will provide the correct responses and taking the mean of the responses (assuming it will be a gaussian distribution), the impact of the incorrect responses on the validity findings will be minimized (the tyranny of the mean).

Policy Implication

The ultimate aim of this study is to provide insight into how the thrill of the game, being anonymous, and opportunism contribute to why someone participates in cybercrime. With this insight, an agenda-setting strategy will be implemented to enhance awareness of how these three factors come into play to facilitate cybercrime. Through the awareness of the insight, the public will be sensitized of the issue and how to protect themselves. This will be done with the assistance of the different interest groups currently working to combat the growing threat of cybercrime. Once the public is sensitized and very aware of these issues, it will put pressure on the different decision-makers to put in policies that will help to protect them. These include setting policies that encourage a culture of self-protection and avoiding cybercrime both as an immoral act as well as an illegal one punishable by the law. Through this strategy, the findings of this paper will be used to effect real policy change that protects the public from cybercrime while preventing the occurrence of further cybercrimes.

References

Benson, V., Saridakis, G., & Mohammed, A. M. (2020). Understanding the Relationship between Cybercrime and Human Behavior through Criminological Theories and Social Networking Sites.

Broadhurst, R., Skinner, K., Sifniotis, N., Matamoros-Macias, B., & Ipsen, Y. (2018). Phishing and Cybercrime Risks in a University Student Community. Available at SSRN 3176319 .

Chan, S. H., & Janjarasjit, S. (2019). Insight into hackers’ reaction toward information security breach. International Journal of Information Management , 49 , 388-396.

Citron, D. K. (2014). Hate crimes in cyberspace . Harvard University Press.

Cooper, P. W. (2015). Global State of Information Security® Survey 2015. Annual State of Information Security Survey .

Jardine, E. (2015). The Dark Web dilemma: Tor, anonymity and online policing. Global Commission on Internet Governance Paper Series , (21).

Lipika, 2018. Key Takeaways From Nuix Black Market Report 2018 . [online] Web Hosting | Cloud Computing | Datacenter | Domain News. Available at: <https://www.dailyhostnews.com/key-takeaways-from-nuix-black-market-report-2018> [Accessed 15 April 2020].

Lusthaus, J., & Varese, F. (2017). Offline and local: The hidden face of cybercrime. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice .

Morgan, S., 2020. Cybercrime Damages $6 Trillion By 2021 . [online] Cybercrime Magazine. Available at: <https://cybersecurityventures.com/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016/> [Accessed 15 April 2020].

Poulsen, K. (2011). Kingpin: the true story of Max Butler, the master Hacker who ran a billion dollar cyber crime network . Hachette UK.

Sarre, R., Lau, L. Y. C., & Chang, L. Y. (2018). Responding to cybercrime: current trends.

Saulnier, L. (2019). Moral Identity, Moral Disengagement, and Online Behaviour from Adolescence to Young Adulthood.

Stalans, L. J., & Donner, C. M. (2018). Explaining Why Cybercrime Occurs: Criminological and Psychological Theories. In Cyber Criminology (pp. 25-45). Springer, Cham.

Williams, M. L. (2016). Guardians upon high: An application of routine activities theory to online identity theft in Europe at the country and individual level. British Journal of Criminology , 56 (1), 21-48.

Young, R., Zhang, L., & Prybutok, V. R. (2007). Hacking into the minds of hackers. Information Systems Management , 24 (4), 281-287.

Zamora, W., 2018. Under The Hoodie: Why Money, Power, And Ego Drive Hackers To Cybercrime - Malwarebytes Labs . [online] Malwarebytes Labs. Available at: <https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2018/08/under-the-hoodie-why-money-power-and-ego-drive-hackers-to-cybercrime/> [Accessed 15 April 2020].

Appendix: Survey Questions

What is your age and gender?

What is your highest level of education?

What is your professional occupation (or what profession would you like to be in)?

I take active measures to protect myself whenever I’m online and I always recommend it to the people I know