Micro-Frauds: Virtual Robberies, Stings and Scams in the Information Age

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Author(s): David. S. Wall (Criminology, School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Durham, UK)
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 19
Source title: Corporate Hacking and Technology-Driven Crime: Social Dynamics and Implications
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Thomas J. Holt (Michigan State University, USA)and Bernadette H. Schell (President's Advisor on Cybercrime, University of Ontario, Canada; Vice-Provost at Laurentian University, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61692-805-6.ch004

Keywords: Digital Crime & Forensics / Information Science Reference / IT Security and Ethics / Security & Forensics

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Abstract

During the past two decades, network technologies have shaped just about every aspect of our lives, not least the ways by which we are now victimized. From the criminal’s point of view, networked technologies are a gift. The technologies act as a force multiplier of grand proportions, providing individual criminals with personal access to an entirely new field of ‘distanciated’ victims across a global span. So effective is this multiplier effect, there is no longer the compulsion to commit highly visible and risky multi-million-dollar robberies when new technologies enable offenders to commit multi-million-dollar thefts from the comfort of their own home, with a relatively high yield and little risk to themselves. From a Criminological perspective, network technologies have effectively democratized fraud. Once a ‘crime of the powerful (Sutherland, 1949; Pearce, 1976; Weisburd, et al., 1991; Tombs and Whyte, 2003) that was committed by offenders who abused their privileged position in society, fraud can now be committed by all with access to the internet. This illustration highlights the way that computers can now be used to commit crimes, and this chapter will specifically focus upon the different ways that offenders can use networked computers to assist them in performing deceptions upon individual or corporate victims in to obtain an informational or pecuniary advantage.

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