Interpersonal Cyber Crime

 Learning Outcomes
 Define interpersonal cybercrime
 Define and differentiate between types of interpersonal cybercrime
 Describe and analyse the ways in which information and communication technology
is used to facilitate these types of interpersonal cybercrime
 Identify and critically engage with the role of law in addressing these cybercrimes
 Recognize and assess the obstacles to responding to and preventing various
interpersonal cybercrimes
Key issues

 Interpersonal cybercrime refers to those cybercrimes committed by

individuals against other individuals with whom they are interacting,
communicating, and/or having some form of real or imagined relationship
(Maras, 2016).
 Victims and offenders of interpersonal cybercrime can be of any age, gender,
race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious background, cultural background, as
well as any socioeconomic and relationship status, with a few exceptions (e.g.,
child sexual exploitation and abuse victims are children) (Maras, 2016).
Key issues
 Interpersonal cybercrime can have significant adverse psychological, social,
political (depending on the person's position), and economic impacts on victims,
including (but not limited to): stress; fear; anxiety; depression; shame; loss of
social standing and reputational harm; loss of human dignity, personal autonomy,
and privacy; and financial burden from medical and counselling services, legal
support, and online protection services and software and offline security
measures (Williford, et al., 2013; Marcum, Higgins, and Ricketts, 2014; UNODC,
2015; Maras, 2016). Furthermore, there have been many instances of
interpersonal cybercrime in various parts of the world where victims have
committed suicide in response to these cybercrimes (UNODC, 2015; Maras, 2016;
ECPAT International, 2018; Powell, Henry and Flynn, 2018).
 These cybercrimes, therefore, require special attention not only because their
impacts on victims are severe, but also because in many cases their
consequences are irreversible.
Examples of Interpersonal Cyber Crime

 Online child sexual exploitation and abuse

 Cyberstalking and cyberharassment
 Cyberbullying
 Gender-based interpersonal cybercrime
Online child sexual exploitation and abuse

 Online child sexual abuse and online child sexual exploitation involve the
use of information and communication technology as a means to sexually abuse
and/or sexually exploit children.
 The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN
ESCAP) (1999) defines child sexual abuse "as contacts or interactions between a
child and an older or more knowledgeable child or adult (stranger, sibling or
person in a position of authority such as a parent or caretaker) when the child is
being used as an object for the older child's or adult's sexual needs. These
contacts or interactions are carried out against the child using force, trickery,
bribes, threats or pressure."
 Child sexual exploitation involves child sexual abuse and/or other sexualized
acts using children that involves an exchange of some kind (e.g., affection, food,
drugs, and shelter)
 Perpetrators of this crime commit abuse or attempt to abuse "a position of
vulnerability, differential power, or trust for sexual purposes" for monetary or
other benefit (e.g., sexual gratification).
Cyberstalking and cyberharassment

 Cyberstalking involves the use of information and communications

technology (ICT) to perpetrate more than one incident intended to repeatedly
harass, annoy, attack, threaten, frighten, and/or verbally abuse individuals
 Perpetrators can engage in cyberstalking directly by emailing, instant
messaging, calling, texting, or utilizing other forms of electronic
communications to communicate obscene, vulgar, and/or defamatory
comments and/or threats to the victim and/or the victim's family, partner,
and friends, and use technologies to monitor, survey and follow the victim's
movements.
 Perpetrators can also engage in cyberstalking indirectly by causing damage to
the victim's digital device (by, for example, infecting the victim's computer
with malware and using this malware to surreptitiously monitor the victim
and/or steal information about the victim) or by posting false, malicious, and
offensive information about the victim online or setting up a fake account in
the victim's name to post material online (social media, chat rooms,
discussion forums, websites, etc.).
Cyberstalking
 Cyberstalking involves a series of behaviours and actions over a period of time that are
intended to intimidate, alarm, frighten, or harass the victim and/or the victim's family,
partner, and friends.
 These behaviours and actions include (but are not limited to):
 flooding the user's inbox with emails;
 frequently posting on the user's online sites, pages, and social media accounts;
 repeatedly calling and/or texting the victim, leaving voicemails, and sending follower and friend
requests;
 joining all online groups and communities the victim is a part of or following the victim's posts
through acquaintances, colleagues, classmates, family members' or friends' social media
accounts;
 and continuously viewing the victim's page (some websites log this information and inform the
user when their page is viewed).
 Victims can be continuously watched, observed, and monitored by perpetrators with or
without their knowledge on online spaces and/or offline spaces. The cyberstalkers'
behaviours and actions cause victims to fear for their safety and well-being, and depending
on the cyberstalker's actions, this fear could extend to the safety and well-being of the
victims' families, partners, and friends
Cyberharassment
 Cyberharassment involves the use of ICT to intentionally humiliate, annoy, attack,
threaten, alarm, offend and/or verbally abuse individuals (Maras, 2016). Only one
incident is needed for cyberharassment to occur; however, it can involve more than one
incident.
 Cyberharassment may also involve targeted harassment, where one or more persons
work together to repeatedly harass their target online over a finite period of time (often
a brief period of time) to cause distress, humiliation, and/or to silence the target.
 The perpetrators of cyberharassment can hack into the victim's account and steal the
victim's personal information, images, and videos.
 Cyberharassment can also involve the posting or other distribution of false information
or rumours about an individual to damage the victim's social standing, interpersonal
relationships, and/or reputation (i.e., a form of cybersmearing).
 This false information is posted on websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, social
media, and other online sites to damage the reputations of people and
businesses.Offenders can also impersonate victims by creating accounts with similar
names and, by making use of existing images of the victims, use these accounts to send
friend and/or follower requests to victims' friends and family members to deceive them
into accepting these requests (a form of online impersonation).
Cyberbullying

 The use of ICT by children around the world has been steadily increasing, with
children of younger ages having access to and using various forms of digital
technology and the Internet. While ICT provides children with the ability to
communicate with others, access and share information, and form
relationships, it also puts children's safety at risk and exposes them to
cybercrimes, such as cyberbullying.
 Cyberbullying involves children's use of ICT "to annoy, humiliate, alarm,
insult or otherwise attack" other children (Maras, 2016, p. 254). Therefore, in
contrast to cyberstalking and cyberharassment, children are both the
perpetrators and victims of this cybercrime.
 Children who engage in cyberbullying utilize text messages, emails, websites,
blogs, polls, social media posts, instant messages, and gaming and virtual
reality sites, to humiliate, denigrate, harass, insult, spread false information,
gossip or rumours, threaten, and/or isolate, exclude and marginalize other
children.
Gender-based interpersonal cybercrime

 Gender-based violence, "violence that is directed against a woman because

she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately”. It includes
physical, sexual, and/or emotional (or psychological) harm and has been
committed both offline and online.
 Women are disproportionately subjected to various forms of online abuse in
various parts of the world, especially women of specific religions, ethnic or
racial groups, sexual orientation, economic status, and with disabilities
Interpersonal cybercrime prevention

 Victim-centred prevention strategies have been proposed to deal with

interpersonal cybercrimes. Lawrence Cohen and Mark Felson's (1979) routine
activity theory (RAT) holds that crime occurs when two elements are present -
a motivated offender and a suitable target, and when one element is absent
- a capable guardian (i.e., anything or anyone that can frustrate the
perpetrator's attempts to commit crime).
 According to RAT, to prevent a crime, at least one of the core elements -
absence of a capable guardian, a motivated offender, or an available target -
needs to be altered. To make crime less attractive for criminals, therefore,
capable guardians, which can be people (e.g., parents, siblings, friends,
partners, and others) or security solutions (e.g., privacy settings, parental
controls, filtering or blocking software, etc.) are proposed. The theory holds
that self-protection measures can serve as capable guardians and frustrate
the attempts of criminals to approach, contact or otherwise target the victim.
Interpersonal cybercrime prevention

 These victim-centred prevention strategies enable victims to take immediate

action to prevent interpersonal cybercrime (at least those who have the
knowledge, skills, and abilities to do so) or at the very least frustrate the
attempts of perpetrators of these cybercrimes. The main criticizm of such
approaches is that it puts the burden of interpersonal cybercrime prevention
on the victim, rather than on the institutions that are supposed to protect
victims from harm (Maras, 2016; Henry, Flynn and Powell, 2018).
 end