Cybercrime and You: How Criminals Attack and the Human Factors That They Seek to Exploit
It addresses the problem of cybercrime for individuals, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing knowledge without new empirical results.
The chapter analyzes cybercrimes targeting individuals, including social engineering and hacking, and introduces a taxonomy to argue that such crimes will persist without interdisciplinary efforts.
Cybercrime is a significant challenge to society, but it can be particularly harmful to the individuals who become victims. This chapter engages in a comprehensive and topical analysis of the cybercrimes that target individuals. It also examines the motivation of criminals that perpetrate such attacks and the key human factors and psychological aspects that help to make cybercriminals successful. Key areas assessed include social engineering (e.g., phishing, romance scams, catfishing), online harassment (e.g., cyberbullying, trolling, revenge porn, hate crimes), identity-related crimes (e.g., identity theft, doxing), hacking (e.g., malware, cryptojacking, account hacking), and denial-of-service crimes. As a part of its contribution, the chapter introduces a summary taxonomy of cybercrimes against individuals and a case for why they will continue to occur if concerted interdisciplinary efforts are not pursued.