Repeat victimization has been widely studied from the perspective of environmental criminology for several decades. During this period, criminologists have identified a set of repeat victimization premises that are observed for many crimes; however, it is unknown whether these premises are also valid for cybercrime. In this study we rely on more than 9 million Zone-H data records from 2010 to 2017 to test whether these premises apply for the cybercrime of website defacement. We show that the phenomenon of repeat victimization is also observed in defaced cyber places (i.e. websites). In particular, we found that repeats contributed little to crime rates, that repeats occurred even several years after the original incident, that they were committed disproportionately by prolific offenders, and that few offenders returned to victimize previous targets. The results suggest that some traditional premises of repeat victimization may also be valid for understanding cybercrime events such as website defacement, implying that environmental criminology theories also constitute a useful framework for cybercrime analysis. The implications of these results in terms of criminological theory, cybercrime prevention, and the limitations derived from the use of Zone-H data are discussed
In general, people are poorly protected against cyberthreats, with the main reason being user behaviour. For the study described in this paper, a ques-tionnaire was developed in order to understand how people’s knowledge of and attitude towards both cyberthreats and cyber security controls affect in-tention to adopt cybersecure behaviour. The study divides attitude into a cog-nitive and an affective component. Although only the cognitive component of attitude is usually studied, the results from a questionnaire of 300 respond-ents show that both the affective and cognitive components of attitude have a clearly positive, albeit varying, influence on behavioural intention, with the affective component having an even greater effect on attitude than the cog-nitive aspect. No correlation was found between knowledge and behavioural intention. The results indicate that attitude is an important factor to include when developing behavioural interventions, but also that different kinds of attitude should be addressed differently in interventions.
People tend to disclose personal identifiable information (PII) that could be used by cybercriminals against them. Often, persuasion techniques are used by cybercriminals to trick people to disclose PII. This research investigates whether people can be made less susceptible to persuasion by reciprocation (i.e., making people feel obligated to return a favour) and authority, particularly in regard to whether information security knowledge and positive affect moderate the relation between susceptibility to persuasion and disclosing PII. Data are used from a population-based survey experiment that measured the actual disclosure of PII in an experimental setting (N = 2426). The results demonstrate a persuasion–disclosure link, indicating that people disclose more PII when persuaded by reciprocation, but not by authority. Knowledge of information security was also found to relate to disclosure. People disclosed less PII when they possessed more knowledge of information security. Positive affect was not related to the disclosure of PII. And contrary to expectations, no moderating effects were found of information security knowledge nor positive affect on the persuasion–disclosure link. Possible explanations are discussed, as well as limitations and future research directions. Uitgegeven door Sage, APA beschrijving: van der Kleij, R., van ‘t Hoff—De Goede, S., van de Weijer, S., & Leukfeldt, R. (2023). Social engineering and the disclosure of personal identifiable information: Examining the relationship and moderating factors using a population-based survey experiment. Journal of Criminology, 56(2-3), 278-293. https://doi.org/10.1177/26338076231162660
