A survey indicates that the number of fraud-related crimes has been increasing considerably throughout the country. In addition, the number of online shopping fraud has been becoming much more than before since 2005. Up to 2009, the number of crimes associated with online shopping fraud has increased to roughly 7114 cases, leading to the percentage as 18.08% of all the fraud-related crimes. Even though the number of fraud-related crimes has been decreasing for the past-three-year period from 2006 to 2009, the crime number of online shopping fraud has been increasing gradually instead. Because the situation of Internet-based swindle is becoming progressively worse, such a fraud-related crime is worth much more attention from authorities concerned and much more effective measures taken by administrators so as to alleviate the number of online swindling crimes. Consumers throughout the country are getting used to make purchases by means of the application of Internet, which has made it possible for consumers to be trapped in online shopping fraud in such a tremendous electronic market. In addition, not only is the generation of online shopping fraud associated with the whole situation, but it is also related to online shoppers and individual traits. Consumer¡¦s involvement in Internet is of great significance to all the factors resulting in online shopping fraud. Based on the Involvement Figure developed by Zaichko wsky in 1985, this study aims to measure Internet-based consumer behavior, to examine the correlation between Consumer¡¦s Involvement in Internet and Purchasing Behavior, and to observe the result of online shopping fraud. This study adopts the participants consisting of the victims suffering from fraud-related crimes in Kaohsiung County, and collects the data by means of the distribution of 310 questionnaires, of which the number of valid questionnaire is up to 260. In addition, this study utilizes SPSS 12.0 to proceed data analysis. Results released by this study indicate as below: 1. In terms of the dimension, Internet Involvement, applied in the questionnaire, consumers recruited in this study belong to medium-degree and high-degree groups. The highest of each dimension is the rationality of Internet. Individual¡¦s internet involvement is obviously correlated to his or her age, education background, occupation and the recognition to 165 fraud-prevention hotline. 2. In terms of the dimension, Purchasing Search, applied in the questionnaire, individuals hired in this study belong to the medium-degree and high-degree groups. The highest of each dimension is the application of purchase. Consumer¡¦s purchasing search is prominently correlated to his or her age, education background, occupation and the recognition to 165 fraud-prevention hotline. 3. Consumer¡¦s Internet Involvement and each dimension are correlated to each other, and so are Purchasing Search and each dimension. Internet Involvement is correlated to consumer¡¦s Purchasing Search in a positive way. 4. In accordance with the above conclusions blended with online shopping fraud survey and researcher¡¦s practical experiences, this study has made it available to submit suggestions in four different aspects including the government organizations, the private corporations, individual tendency to Internet, further researches.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Communication, Information and Library Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-318).

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Computer Science, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-83).

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Computer Science, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-50).

As the number of computing devices connected to the Internet increases and the Internet itself becomes more pervasive, so does the opportunity for criminals to use these devices in cybercrimes. Supporting the increase in cybercrime is the growth and maturity of the digital underground economy with strong links to its more visible and physical counterpart. The digital underground economy provides software and related services to equip the entrepreneurial cybercriminal with the appropriate skills and required tools. Financial malware, particularly the capability for injection of code into web browsers, has become one of the more profitable cybercrime tool sets due to its versatility and adaptability when targeting clients of institutions with an online presence, both in and outside of the financial industry. There are numerous families of financial malware available for use, with perhaps the most prevalent being Zeus and SpyEye. Criminals create (or purchase) and grow botnets of computing devices infected with financial malware that has been configured to attack clients of certain websites. In the research data set there are 483 configuration files containing approximately 40 000 webinjects that were captured from various financial malware botnets between October 2010 and June 2012. They were processed and analysed to determine the methods used by criminals to defraud either the user of the computing device, or the institution of which the user is a client. The configuration files contain the injection code that is executed in the web browser to create a surrogate interface, which is then used by the criminal to interact with the user and institution in order to commit fraud. Demographics on the captured data set are presented and case studies are documented based on the various methods used to defraud and bypass financial security controls across multiple industries. The case studies cover techniques used in social engineering, bypassing security controls and automated transfers.

At any given moment in time, there are people complying with fraudulent requests (i.e. scams) on the Internet. While the incidence rates are low (between five and ten percent of the population becoming victims on a yearly basis), the financial and emotional consequences can be high. In this Thesis we composed a unified theory of which factors made individuals more likely to comply with scams and what psychological mechanisms are unwittingly employed by con-men to make their (illegitimate marketing) offers more enticing. The strongest overall predictor of scam compliance (i.e. the extent to which an individual is likely to comply with fraudulent requests) was the level of self-control, regardless of the observed stage of a scam. On the basis of previous research, we postulated and have empirically shown that falling for a scam is a 3-stage process (i.e. assessing a scam to be plausible - plausiblity, responding to scammers - responded and, finally, losing utility to them – lost out). Taking this paradigm into account, we analysed the three stages in separate investigations and tested the viability of various psychological factors that play a role in them. We hypothesized that attitudes towards risky choices would play a role in finding an Internet scam plausible and thus started our investigation by transferring one of the classic economic psychological theories (i.e. Prospect Theory) into a virtual setting and demonstrated that risk preferences remain unchanged between concrete and virtual settings. Our investigation showed that attitudes towards risk are similar across virtual and concrete domains, but did not yield a reliable psychometric scale measuring risk preferences. As a corollary, in Chapter 3, we investigated psychological mechanisms that influence risky preferences as applied to all three stages of scam compliance. The empirical investigation in Chapter 3 of the present Thesis focused on social psychological mechanisms of persuasion. A scale of susceptibility to persuasion was developed, validated and then applied to the phenomena of scam compliance in two studies. Four reliable factors contributing to susceptibility to persuasion emerged: influence of authority, social influence, self-control and the need for consistency. The susceptibility to persuasion scale was then used to predict overall lifetime (study 1) and time-limited (study 2) scam compliance across the three stages of scams. Social Influence weakly predicted the plausibility stage in study 1, while strongly predicting the response stage in study 2. The need for consistency strongly predicted response stages in both studies. While compliance with requests from authorities did not predict responses to any of the stages in study 1, it weakly predicted the plausibility of a scam and strongly predicted responding to it in study 2. Weak self-control was a significant predictor of losing funds in study 1 and a strong predictor of responding to scams in study 2. As lack of self-control (as a personality trait) emerged as one of the significant predictors of scam compliance, this led us to infer that there were other personality traits that would contribute to understanding scam compliance. That became the topic of Chapter 4 of the present Thesis. In Chapter 4, we used the five factor model of personality, a brief self-control scale and the UPPS impulsive behaviour scale to measure the impact of personality traits on scam compliance in the response stage. Results showed that extraversion, openness, self-control, premeditation, sensation seeking and (negative) urgency had an influence on the response rates to fraudulent offers. Lack of self-control (as a personality trait) again emerged as a strong predictor of overall scam compliance, which led us to infer that self-control as a cognitive state would also contribute to measuring scam compliance in general and in specific types of fraud. The investigation reported in Chapter 3 showed fraudulent Internet auctions to be an effective scam. As a consequence of these two findings, in Chapter 5, we investigated the impact of self-regulatory fatigue on compliance with fraudulent Internet auctions. In the empirical investigation in Chapter 5 180 respondents in two groups were exposed to a cognitive task designed to be ego-depleting and then to a constructed fraudulent Internet auction. They were asked a series of questions concerned with the likelihood of them purchasing a desired item (i.e. the third stage of a scam) and its appeal to them. We found no evidence that lowered self-control (as a state) had any impact on the appeal of fraudulent offer or the likelihood of purchasing it. We also demonstrated that the perception of risk in the fraudulent Internet auctions is most strongly influenced by the feedback mechanisms and the sellers’ ability to use correct English. In the conclusion to the present Thesis we discussed the implications of our empirical investigations and constructed a fictional fraudulent offer that would be effective according to our research. It should, for example, be based on the advance fee schemes and should be delivered over the Internet to reach the most potential victims. Once we had created an outline of an effective scam, we used that as our starting point to suggest mechanisms that would be effective in resisting it. For example, individuals could employ heuristics in a better way or conduct reality checks; and software toolkits that would help in resisting scams could be developed on the basis of our findings. We also discussed future research directions (obtaining larger samples, focusing on specific types of scams and specific populations; and others) and general implications of our findings.

In January 2004, the United States Congress passed and put into effect the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN SPAM). The Act was set forth to regulate bulk commercial email (spam) and set the limits for what was acceptable. Various sources have since investigated and speculated on the efficacy of the CAN SPAM Act, few of which report a desirable outcome for users of electronic mail. Despite the apparent consensus of anti-spam firms and the community of email users that the Act was less than effective, there is little to no research on the efficacy of the Act that utilizes any significant statistical rigor or accepted scientific practices. The present study seeks to determine what, if any, impact the CAN SPAM act had on spam messages, to identify areas of improvement to help fight spam that is both fraudulent and dangerous. The data consisted of 2,071,965 spam emails sent between February 1, 1998 and December 31, 2008. The data were aggregated by month and an interrupted time series design was chosen to assess the impact the CAN SPAM Act had on spam. Analyses revealed that the CAN SPAM Act had no observable impact on the amount of spam sent and received; no impact on two of three CAN SPAM laws complied with among spam emails, the remaining law of which there was a significant decrease in compliance after the Act; and no impact on the number of spam emails sent from within the United States. Implications of these findings and suggestions for policy are discussed.

The number of recorded cybercrime incidents has skyrocketed over the last few years. A large part of this development is due to society’s increased reliance on the internet and the backbone that supports it. This in turn increases the profitability of cybercrime. Cybercrime has a broad definition, but in essence cybercrime are crimes that are assisted by technology, often taking place on the internet. The true impact cybercrime has on society is difficult to assess, since it has both financial and social impact, depending on what type of crime has been committed. This thesis examines how cybercrime and the Swedish police’s ability to combat cybercrime is portrayed by Swedish news media, as well as which demographics of the Swedish population are the most susceptible to cybercrime over the last ten years. This was achieved by performing a literature review, where both newspaper articles and reports from various law enforcement agencies were examined. A total of 54 news articles and 21 reports from various law enforcement agencies were used in the study. The included material was analyzed and divided into categories using thematic coding, and the results showed that news media does not always give an accurate depiction of the cybercrime landscape in Sweden. Cybercrime reporting in news articles was often found to be over-dramatized and shallow, which may negatively influence the reader's ability to understand the risks of cybercrime. The law enforcement's ability to combat cybercrime is portrayed as underfunded and in need of personnel with the expertise necessary to curb cybercrime. Although efforts to bolster the government's ability to fight cybercrime have been made during the last ten years, work still remains for law enforcement to catch up and keep pace with cybercriminals.

This doctoral thesis represents an investigation into financial fraud in online banking and card payment systems in the UK and China, involving network security, online financial transactions, internet fraud, card payment systems and individuals' perception of and behaviours towards electronic environments. In contrast to previous studies, the research questions were tackled by survey questionnaires both in the UK and China, with a particular interest in fraud and attempted fraud. The main findings from the UK respondents were that those with higher IT skill and younger respondents are more likely to be defrauded on the internet. Certain types of online activities are associated with higher risks of fraud, these being internet banking; online shopping and media downloading. Furthermore, four predictors (internet banking, online education services, downloading media and length of debit card usage) provided significant effects in the logistic regression model to explain fraud occurrence in the UK. Based on the data collected in China, younger respondents were more likely to have higher general IT skill and higher educational qualifications. However, online shopping was the only online activity which was significantly correlated to fraud occurrence. Finally, two predictors (frequency of usage of online shopping and number of debit cards) were selected in the logistic regression model to explain fraud occurrence in China.

Banks are currently battling rising of fraudulent activities as it damages their relationship with their customers. Online banking fraud is decreasing trust and confidence among the customers and decreasing operating performance and increasing cost for the banks. This paper looks at online banking fraud in Norway and answers the research questions (1). How are bank customers attacked through the internet? and (2). How are banks trying to prevent fraudulent attacks against their customers? Interviews and document collection were used for data gathering, and in total, four interviews were conducted with academics and business professionals. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings suggest that BankID fraud, Card fraud, CEO fraud, Investment fraud, Love scams and Phishing are among the most frequent attacks in Norway at present. Attacks contain elements of social manipulation, constantly change and are customized to target victims. The attacks have in common that they all are showing patterns of professionalizing. The study found that Norwegian banks are technologically advanced regarding fraud detection and authentication, and have put efforts into awareness against online banking fraud. However, the main issue of online banking fraud in Norway is seemingly grounded in the interactions made by the customers with the technology and not the prevention system the banks deploy.