The internet has revolutionized society and crime with it. However, not every platform has criminals. Nonetheless, it depends on the nature of crime and its magnitude. The internet serves several purposes, such as work and interaction. Platforms involving work-related matters can have criminals targeting people through their credit cards or other promises of things like promotions, salary increases, and swindling employees to provide their credit card details and later on tap into their account and steal from them (Leonhardt, 2019). The nature of crime in such a platform mostly entails white-collar crime, which is also rarely investigated. People are also prone to leaving traceable digital footprints, such as photos or their locations. Crime in social media is different and includes a wide range of criminal activities targeting vulnerabilities of the victims such as gender, age, race, and health, among others. I would focus my investigation on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and others.
My selection of social media is based on two factors, which are the nature of the platform and the crowd it offers for criminals to thrive. Social media is not an official platform and entails a high degree of carelessness or lack of restraint. Therefore, uses are seldom aware or are hardly keen on criminals that may be targeting them. Bullying, rape, and torture videos and are commonly identified on social media platforms, besides other types of crimes ( Salter, 2016; Hayes & Luther, 2018; Solon, 2017 ). Secondly, social media platform offers a crowd that one can easily exploit and hide in the masses. The demographic features of people on social media allow for exploitation. The majority of people are youths, and others are as young as under the age of 18 years old. With the widespread use of social media platforms, which one can access and conduct a criminal activity without having to consider laws as the geographic area covered is international.
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References
Hayes, R. M., & Luther, K. (2018). # Crime: Social Media, Crime, and the Criminal Legal System. Springer.
Leonhardt, C. (2019). Here's everything a cybercriminal can do if they steal your credit card. CNBC. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/heres-everything-cyber-criminals-can-do-if-they-steal-your-credit-card.html
Salter, M. (2016). Crime, justice, and social media. Taylor & Francis.
Solon, O. (2017). Why a rising number of criminals are using Facebook Live to film their acts. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/27/rising-numbers-of-criminals-are-using-facebook-to-document-their-crimes
