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All Cybercrimes Were Not Created Equal: Assessing Cybercrime Using a Routine Activities Theory Model-Comparison Approach

Sep 16, 2021 | Views:209012 |

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All Cybercrimes Were Not Created Equal: Assessing Cybercrime Using a Routine Activities Theory Model-Comparison Approach

An Oral Defence by Mr. Troy E. Smith

This study took a human-centric approach to exploring cybercrime victimisation by comparing the applicability of the Routine Activities Theory (RAT) between cyber-dependent (hacking and malware infection) and cyber-enabled (online harassment and unsolicited content) crime victimisation. Data collection was done using a self-administered survey disseminated using Facebook. The collected data were analysed using Naïve Bayes, a supervised machine learning algorithm to develop classification and dependency models with B-Course v 2.0.0. The prevalence of cybercrime victimisation was found to be 76% with 5% of the respondents being victims to all four crimes examined. Malware was found to be the most prevalent of the four cybercrimes, with a rate of 59%. This research illustrates that relative to the measures of the RAT concepts used in this study, the RAT showed greater utility with cyber-dependent crimes than cyber-enabled crimes.

Voluntary and involuntary personal information disclosure through social networking sites increased the likelihood of being a target of hacking, online harassment and unsolicited content. Deviant online activities such as peer-to-peer downloads and watching pornography increase the risk of cyber-dependent crime victimisation. Personal guardianship measures such as knowledge of cybercrime victimisation and setting accounts to private (limiting uncontrolled access to personal information) are associated with cyber-dependent crimes. Dependency modelling identified that demographic factor may constrain routine activities and that some routine activities are interrelated.

The study concluded that there is a difference in etiology between cyber-dependent and cyber-enabled crime in relation to victimisation suggesting that all cybercrimes cannot be explained with general theories, which necessitates a typological approach to the study of cybercrime victimisation.

Mr. TROY E. SMITH is a doctoral candidate at The University of Trinidad and Tobago's (UTT) Institute of Criminology and Public Safety. His research interests include cybercrime victimisation, social media addiction and the application of machine learning in social sciences.

Mr. Smith holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry from the University of the West Indies (UWI). He has also done postgraduate programmes at the American Military University (AMU) in areas such as Advance Cybercrime Law, Geospatial Information Systems, Applied Statistics and Analytics. He was also selected for participation and scholarship to attend the 2018 Organization of American States (OAS) Cybersecurity Symposium by the General Secretariat of the OAS.

Mr. Smith has made several contributions to international journals on topics such as cyber-terrorism, cyber-warfare, decision-making, strategy and recently submitted two articles on social media addictions. Mr Smith is currently engaged in research with scholars from the University of the United Arab Emirates and the University of Fiji on cyber-sexual harassment. He also has an upcoming project with researchers from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. In addition, he has been a guest lecturer at the Regional Counterdrug Intelligence Training School (RCITS).

Mr. Smith has been employed at the Ministry of National Security for the last twelve (12) years and has functioned in a variety of roles. During that period, he contributed to various crime policies, strategies and represented at various centres, committees and conferences.

He also has and ongoing interest in languages and has started learning Mandarin and even Arabic for a short time and was even awarded the prize for top performance in the Mandarin programme at the Centre for Language Learning, University of the West Indies.