NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository

we focus on financial cybercrime. Other types of cybercrime such as offences against the
person (cyberstalking, harassment, blackmailing), computer misuse (denial of service 4
and software piracy), and distribution of illicit material (child pornography and promotion
of activities amongst paedophiles), are beyond our scope.
What is it?
“Cybercrimes are criminal or harmful activities that are informational, global and
networked and are to be distinguished from crimes that simply use computers. They are
the product of networked technologies that have transformed the division of criminal
labour to provide entirely new opportunities and new forms of crime which typically
involve the acquisition or manipulation of information and its value across global
networks for gain. They can be broken down into crimes that are related to the integrity
of the system, crimes in which networked computers are used to assist the perpetration
of crime, and crimes which relate to the content of computers.”
Source: David S Wall (2007). Cybercrime, Polity Press Cambridge, p221.
We focus specifically on credit card fraud and identity theft. 5 The choice of these two
often interrelated cybercrimes is deliberate because they share with legitimate
businesses the ultimate goal of financial profit, allowing us to apply business and
innovation theory to understand their dynamics. These examples also help illustrate
some of the more general problems facing law enforcement agencies charged with
dealing with the problem. Despite this being a phenomenon involving the use of
information across borders, there is no uniformity of legislative approach. This has led to
an extremely permissive cybercrime environment in some countries which is of great
concern to many ‘stakeholders’.
Earlier research has typically been by criminologists, information technology specialists,
private security firms, the financial services sector and journalists. Although, as we shall
see, innovation is at the heart of these cybercrime activities, those involved in the field
4 There have been several well publishes attacks on gaming website which effectively close down the sites until
a ransom has been paid.
5 We use the term ‘credit card fraud’ to encompass all forms of fraud involving credit, debit and charge cards.
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