Edited by Mareile KaufmannHeidi Mork Lomell

The De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Criminology examines how digital devices spread and cut across all fields of crime and control. Providing a glossary of key theoretical, methodological and criminological concepts, the book defines and further establishes a vibrant, rapidly developing field. Focusing on central criminological phenomena, it provides a framework that will enable readers to bring their own research themes into digital environments.

UBerlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2025. 525p.

By Melanie Burton, Savannah Minihan, Mariesa Nicholas, et al.

eSafety is the first government agency to implement a dedicated scheme responsible for facilitating the removal of non-consensual intimate images posted online via the establishment of an image-based abuse (IBA) reporting portal and a civil penalties scheme. This research examines the operation of eSafety’s IBA scheme from 2018 to 2023. The paper examines what was being reported under the scheme, including who was reporting and changes in report numbers over time.

The increasing number of reports over the first five years of the scheme highlights the importance of community awareness-raising and preventative education, as well as investment in initiatives that destigmatise and de-shame image-based abuse and encourage help-seeking.

The IBA scheme enables eSafety to engage directly with online service and platforms to get the intimate content removed. It finds that the scheme has increasingly helped remove harmful content and enabled Australian victims of image-based abuse to access expert assistance, regain control over their situation and to receive practical support to help them feel safer online.

Key findings

Reports to the IBA scheme increased by more than 960%, from 849 reports in 2018/19 to 9,060 reports in 2022/23.

The increase in reports was led by a 1,332% increase in reports for sexual extortion and a 2,206% increase in reports for child sexual exploitation.

eSafety sent 1,961 removal requests to online services and platforms and were successful in having all or some of the material removed for 89.9% of these requests.

Journal of Online Trust and Safety, April 2025, 37p.

By Abbas Panjwani, Greg Oxley, William Downs

Criminals successfully stole £1.2 billion from individuals through banking fraud and scams in 2023 according to industry figures. 1 Fraud accounted for over 40% of crimes against individuals in England and Wales in 2024. And the government has said the total impact of fraud when counting things like emotional harm and investigatory costs is over double that of the direct losses from fraud. Despite the prevalence of fraud and the public costs, the government and police approach to fraud in recent years has been criticised for failing to take the crime seriously. For example, in the year ending March 2024, only around 2% of fraud offences recorded by police were referred to territorial forces for investigation. In 2023 the government published its fraud strategy which included a range of measures to stop fraud happening in the first place, pursue fraudsters when they are successful, and help victims. Some of the main initiatives include establishing a National Fraud Squad of specialist investigators, overhauling the fraud reporting system and requiring payment service providers to reimburse victims of authorised payment fraud. The nature and scale of banking fraud Industry body UK Finance estimates that criminals successfully stole £1.17 billion through banking fraud and scams in 2023. Of this £709 million was unauthorised and £460 million was authorised, levels which have remained broadly flat since 2021. Unauthorised fraud is where the fraudulent transaction is carried out by a third party, not the victim. Authorised fraud involves the victim being tricked into paying money into another account that is controlled by a criminal. This is also known as Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud. Payment providers almost always reimburse victims of unauthorised fraud. For APP fraud, in 2023 62% of losses were reimbursed, a figure which has increased over time. From October 2024, payment providers are required by law to reimburse APP victims, subject to some conditions.

London: House of Commons Library, 2025. 32p.

By Sophie Davies | Manon Roberts | Amber Evans | Freya Smith | Alex Murray,

Fraud is now the most commonly experienced crime in the UK, making up over 40 per cent of all recorded crime. Instances of fraud have risen substantially over the last decade, from 510,403 offences recorded in the year ending 2013 to 1.16 million offences recorded in the year ending 2023, with online fraud contributing significantly to the increase (the Crime Survey for England and Wales estimates that over 60 per cent of cyber incidents take place online). Yet our understanding of online fraud in particular — its typology, scale and impact — is limited. Crest Advisory, in partnership with the Police Foundation and Birkbeck, University of London (Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research), and with funding from the Dawes Trust, is carrying out a large research project into tackling online fraud. The first part of our project focuses on developing a better understanding of the impact of online fraud on victims and the wider public. In September 2023, Crest published findings from large-scale online surveys of the public and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which explored public perceptions and experiences of online fraud. This report presents the findings from interviews with 20 victims and 12 focus groups (with 96 members of the public) to build on the survey findings and deepen our insight and knowledge of online fraud victimisation and its impact. It addresses a key gap as most existing studies do not distinguish between online and offline fraud victimisation, in part because many fraudulent activities combine offline and online elements. Key findings from the interviews and focus groups are set out below.

London: Crest Advisory, 2024. 36p.

By The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is proud to release a practical resource designed to empower law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and stakeholders in tackling cryptocurrency-related crimes. The guide "Decoding Crypto Crime: A Guide for Law Enforcement" simplifies complex concepts like blockchain technology and virtual assets, offering best practices for investigating common crypto crimes such as investment scams, extortion, and phishing.

It provides actionable steps for collecting critical evidence, interacting with Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), and utilizing blockchain analytics tools. Recognizing the challenges victims face, the guide also offers support strategies and emphasizes the importance of cross-jurisdictional collaboration. While not exhaustive, this guide serves as a foundational tool to bridge the knowledge gap and enhance law enforcement’s ability to navigate the rapidly evolving world of crypto crime. Download the guide today to strengthen your capacity to combat digital financial crime and ensure a safer digital landscape.

Prague: OSCE, 2025. 64p.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Cybercrime poses serious threats and financial costs to individuals and businesses in the United States and worldwide. Reports of data breaches and ransomware attacks on governments and businesses have become common, as have incidents against individuals (e.g., identity theft, online stalking, and harassment). Concern over cybercrime has increased as the internet has become a ubiquitous part of modern life. However, comprehensive, consistent, and reliable data and metrics on cybercrime still do not exist - a consequence of a shortage of vital information resulting from the decentralized nature of relevant data collection at the national level.

Cybercrime Classification and Measurement addresses the absence credible cybercrime data and metrics. This report provides a taxonomy for the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the purpose of measuring different types of cybercrime, including both cyber-enabled and cyber-dependent crimes faced by individuals and businesses, and considers the needs for its periodic revision. 

Washington DC: National Academies Press, 2025. 259p.

By Claudio Mezzetti,  keshini muthukuda,  Haishan Yuan

We study whether data hacking of local organizations causes an increase in identity theft in the organization's local area. We use a difference in differences approach exploiting the timing of incidents of hacking and identity theft in the USA from 2015 to 2018, and estimate a fixed effects model that includes time and Core Based Statistical Area, or County, fixed effects. We find that a hacking incident in a local organization leads to 0.792 to 1.044 more identity thefts per 10,000 population in the local area the following year. The increase represents a 42% to 77% increase in the average prevalence of identity theft. We also show that among all our controls the unemployment rate is the most significant predictor of identity theft.

Mezzetti, Claudio and muthukuda, keshini and Yuan, Haishan, Crime in the Digital Age: Do Cyber Attacks Lead to Identity Theft? (April 24, 2024).

By Jonathan Lusthaus

Cybercrime is not a solely technical subject but one that involves human offenders who are susceptible to social scientific study. Yet, despite calls for cybercrime research to be mainstreamed, the topic remains a niche area within legal studies and the social sciences. Drawing on the most significant findings over recent years, this review aims to make the subject more accessible to a wide range of scholars by softening some of the perceived boundaries between conceptions of cybercrime and conventional crime. It examines these key themes in the literature: definitions and categories of cybercrime, cybercrime marketplaces, the governance of cybercrime, the importance of “place” within the world of cybercrime, cybercriminal networks, a discussion of what is new or old about cybercrime, and how we should define the concept going forward. The empirical literature on these themes suggests a simple definition is most appropriate: Cybercrime is crime that uses digital technology in a significant way.

Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Vol. 20 (2024), pp. 369–385

By Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

Three categories of organised groups that exploit advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) to infringe legal and regulatory controls: (1) traditional organised criminal groups which make use of ICT to enhance their terrestrial criminal activities; (2) organised cybercriminal groups which operate exclusively online; and (3) organised groups of ideologically and politically motivated individuals who make use of ICT to facilitate their criminal conduct are described in this article. The need for law enforcement to have in-depth knowledge of computer forensic principles, guidelines, procedures, tools, and techniques, as well as anti-forensic tools and techniques will become more pronounced with the increased likelihood of digital content being a source of disputes or forming part of underlying evidence to support or refute a dispute in judicial proceedings. There is also a need for new strategies of response and further research on analysing organised criminal activities in cyberspace.

Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, 2008, 26p.

By Anita Lavorgna, and Anna Sergi

This paper, based on discourse analysis of policy documents, departs from a critique of the juxtaposition of the terms “serious” and “organised” in policies against organised crime in the UK. The conceptualisation of organised crime as national security threat supports our hypothesis that a similar critique can be applied to the emerging narrative of cyber-organised crime in the country. We argue that, whereby organised crime has become essentially “serious” as consequence of its characterisation as a national security threat, cyber crime is becoming “organised” in the policy narrative because of its seriousness. The seriousness and organisation of cyber crime justifies its inclusion within the national security agenda, thus accessing the procedural benefits of criminal intelligence assigned to national security threats. The implications associated to the evolution of such narratives in policy-making need to be assessed while policies are still developing.

International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 2016, 18p.

By Benjamin Havers, Kartikeya Tripathi, Alexandra Burton, Sally McManus, Claudia Cooper

Background - Younger people are more likely to report cybercrime than older people. As older people spend more time online, this may change. If similarly exposed, risk factors including social isolation and poor health could make older adults disproportionally susceptible. We aimed to explore whether cybercrime risks and their predictors vary between age groups. Methods - We analysed responses from 35,069 participants aged 16+ in the 2019/20 Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). We investigated, among people who have used the internet in the past year, risks of experiencing any cybercrime, repeat victimisation and associated financial loss across age groups. Results - Despite being at lower risk of reporting any cybercrime in the past year, people aged 75+ were more likely to report financial loss resulting from cybercrime victimisation (OR 4.25, p = 0.037) and repeat cybercrime victimisation (OR 2.03, p = 0.074) than younger people. Men, those from Mixed or Black ethnic groups, more deprived areas, managerial professional groups, and with worse health were at greater cybercrime risk. Discussion - While younger adults are more at risk from cybercrime, older adults disclosed more severe cases (repetitive victimisation and associated financial loss), perhaps due to lesser awareness of scams and reporting options. As most people experience declining health as they age, greater understanding of why poor health predicts cybercrime could inform prevention initiatives that would particularly benefit older age groups and mitigate risks of growing internet use among older adults. Health and social care professionals may be well positioned to support prevention.

PLOS ONE | December 18, 2024

By Isabella Voce and Anthony Morgan

The cost of cybercrime is often expressed in terms of the financial loss to individuals, businesses and governments. This report argues that in order to invest the necessary financial, human and technical resources in prevention and response, perceived harm must be widened to include practical, health, social, financial and legal impacts.

The authors propose a harm index for victims, using a novel approach that draws on victim self-report data collected through the Australian Cybercrime Survey. The index provides a measure of the relative severity of each of 17 types of cybercrime, calculated based on victim reports of the prevalence and severity of each harm.

Key findings

Nearly half of all respondents had been a victim of at least one type of cybercrime in the 12 months prior to the survey.

Cybercrime victims experience a range of harms arising from their victimisation. Practical, social and health impacts were the most common harms experienced, followed by financial and legal difficulties.

Most cybercrime harm (71%) is concentrated among victims who did not lose any money in the most recent incident (82% of victims).

Harm can be reduced when incidents are successfully disrupted or steps are taken to minimise the impact on victims.

Certain groups are over-represented as victims, with this over-representation even more pronounced when the level of harm is taken into account.

Repeat victimisation is also common: 11% of individuals accounted for 58% of the harm reported in the survey.

There was a significant relationship between a victim’s total harm score and their likelihood of seeking help from the police.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice 706

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2025. 21p.

By Danielle Stibbe, Stijn Ruiter, Wouter Steenbeek, Asier Moneva

Objectives: This study investigates the effect of advertised rewards in credential leaks on the likelihood and speed of account hijacking. Methods: In an online field experiment, we created 176 honey Gmail accounts and randomly assigned them to eight different posts containing account credential leaks. We used a 2 × 2 experimental design, manipulating two key variables within the post titles: the number of accounts (5 K or 1.5 M) and the promise of access to additional platforms (absent or present). We then monitored the accounts for any subsequent activity. Results: Our findings indicate that the promise of access to additional platforms increased the likelihood and speed of an attempted access. Only 12 accounts were fully accessed, however, because most hijackers did not complete the second-factor authentication (2FA) process required for gaining full access. It seems that the 2FA acted as a deterrent to complete Gmail account hijacking. Conclusions: The study aligns with the rational choice perspective of crime, showing that the prospect of greater rewards leads to more attempted account accesses

Computers in Human Behavior Reports, Volume 14, May 2024, 100410

By Asier Moneva, Stijn Ruiter, Daniël Meinsma

Criminal expertise plays a crucial role in the choices offenders make when committing a crime, including their modus operandi. However, our knowledge about criminal decision making online remains limited. Drawing on insights from cyber security, we conceptualize the cybercrime commission process as the sequence of phases of the cyber kill chain that offenders go through. We assume that offenders who follow the sequence consecutively use the most efficient hacking method. Building upon the expertise paradigm, we hypothesize that participants with greater hacking experience and IT skills undertake more efficient hacks. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed data from 69 computer security and software engineering students who were invited to hack a vulnerable website in a computer lab equipped with monitoring software, which allowed to collect objective behavioral measures. Additionally, we collected individual measures regarding hacking expertise through an online questionnaire. After quantitatively measuring efficiency using sequence analysis, a regression model showed that the expertise paradigm may also apply to hackers. We discuss the implications of our novel research for the study of offender decision-making processes more broadly.

Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 155, June 2024, 108180

By Ilya Klauzner, Amy Pisani

  AIM To examine the trends in, major characteristics of, and the police response to cybercrime in NSW. METHOD We extracted data from the ReportCyber Application Platform (RCAP), a national cybercrime reporting system operated by the Australian Cyber Security Centre. Data was analysed over a three-year period from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2022 and was restricted to incidents where the victim resided in NSW. We separate cybercrime into five offence categories: cyber-enabled fraud, identity theft, cyber-enabled abuse, online image abuse (OIA), and device. We conducted a descriptive analysis on the victim, suspected perpetrator, and report characteristics to report on trends and characteristics of reported cybercrime. We estimated an ordinary least squares regression model to identify factors correlated with a referral to police of reported cybercrime. RESULTS Over the three years to June 2022, there were 39,494 reports of cybercrime where the victim resided in NSW, and more than $404 million reported lost. Cybercrime reports increased by 42%, with all cyber offence categories increasing except cyber abuse. Increases in cyber enabled fraud and identity crime, spurred a corresponding increase in reported cyber crime related financial losses by individuals. Most victims were individuals (89%), male (53%) and over 25 years of age (87%); however, differences in victim type were observed within offence categories. While a high proportion of victims have evidence about the incident (94%), the majority did not know their perpetrator and therefore few reports included suspect details (28%). The majority (71%) of reports were closed by police in RCAP with no further investigation undertaken. Reports were however more likely to be referred to police when the incident involved a victim aged 17 years or younger, the suspect was known to the victim, money was lost, or an OIA offence was indicated. CONCLUSION Our results show that cybercrime in NSW largely follows the same increasing trend that has been observed in national cybercrime studies. However, the statistics we report here only offer a partial view of reported cybercrime in NSW as we do not capture data reported directly to police or other national reporting systems. There are clear benefits in ongoing public reporting of cybercrime trends both at the national level and separately for individual states and territories, which could be enabled by integrating reporting systems and enhancing police data

Bureau Brief no. 165. 

Sydney:  NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. , 2023. 18p.

By Adebayo Benedict Soares and Suleman Lazarus

This article examines fifty case files of cybercriminals that the Economicand Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) convicted for online romance fraud. It profiles offenders and explores the value of the SpaceTransition Theory in understanding digital crimes. Through documentary analysis, the study identifies key patterns in victim demographics, fraudsters’ operational strategies, and offenders’ socioeconomic back-grounds. Findings reveal a high concentration of U.S. victims (56%) and a preference among offenders for Apple’s iPhone (58%). Most offenders presented themselves as Caucasian American males (46%) or military personnel (12%), with some adopting Caucasian European male identities (10%). Victim demographics show a pronounced gender disparity: 70% of offenders primarily targeted female victims, 14% targeted male victims, 10% reached both genders, and 6% did not specify the victims’ gender. The analysis also indicates that most offenders were university students (74%), with Facebook (46%) identified as the primary platform for these fraudulent activities. The study emphasizes the need for prevention strategies that genuinely consider the socioeconomic and political conditions that may make online fraud an appealing career option.

Criminal Justice Studies : A Critical Journal of Crime, Law and Society, 2024, 25p.

By Wendy Grossman 

Who will rule cyberspace? And why should people care? Recently stories have appeared in a variety of news media, from the sensational to the staid, that portray the Internet as full of pornography, pedophilia, recipes for making bombs, lewd and lawless behavior, and copyright violators. And, for politicians eager for votes, or to people who have never strolled the electronic byways, regulating the Net seems as logical and sensible as making your kids wear seat belts. Forget freedom of speech: children can read this stuff.

From the point of view of those on the Net, mass-media's representation of pornography on the Internet grossly overestimates the amount that is actually available, and these stories are based on studies that are at best flawed and at worst fraudulent. To netizens, the panic over the electronic availability of bomb-making recipes and other potentially dangerous material is groundless: the same material is readily available in public libraries. Out on the Net, it seems outrageous that people who have never really experienced it are in a position to regulate it.

How then, should the lines be drawn in the grey area between cyberspace and the physical world? In net.wars, Wendy Grossman, a journalist who has covered the Net since 1992 for major publications such as Wired, The Guardian, and The Telegraph, assesses the battles that will define the future of this new venue. From the Church of Scientology's raids on Net users to netizens attempts to overthrow both the Communications Decency Act and the restrictions on the export of strong encryption, net.wars explains the issues and the background behind the headlines. Among the issues covered are net scams, class divisions on the net, privacy issues, the Communications Decency Act, women online, pornography, hackers and the computer underground, net criminals and sociopaths, and more.

New York; London: NYU Press, 1998. 256p.

By Isabella Voce and Anthony Morgan

This study analyses data from a survey of Australian adult computer users conducted in June 2021 to examine the influence of online routine activities and life stressors on the likelihood of profit-motivated cybercrime victimisation.

Compared with non-victims, victims spent more time online, more frequently engaged in recreational online activities and were more likely to employ higher-risk online practices. Small-to-medium enterprise owners working from home were more likely to be victims. Respondents who had experienced recent increases in financial stress and gambling and negative impacts on interpersonal relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic were also more likely to be a victim of cybercrime.

Being accessible online and a lack of personal and physical guardianship are associated with an increased risk of being a victim, but other factors may influence the susceptibility of computer users to cybercrime victimisation. This has important implications for cybercrime responses

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 675. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2023. 18p.

By Felix Soldner, Bennett Kleinberg, Shane D. Johnson

The popularity of online shopping is steadily increasing. At the same time, fake product reviews are published widely and have the potential to affect consumer purchasing behavior. In response, previous work has developed automated methods utilizing natural language processing approaches to detect fake product reviews. However, studies vary considerably in how well they succeed in detecting deceptive reviews, and the reasons for such differences are unclear. A contributing factor may be the multitude of strategies used to collect data, introducing potential confounds which affect detection performance. Two possible confounds are data-origin (i.e., the dataset is composed of more than one source) and product ownership (i.e., reviews written by individuals who own or do not own the reviewed product). In the present study, we investigate the effect of both confounds for fake review detection. Using an experimental design, we manipulate data-origin, product ownership, review polarity, and veracity. Supervised learning analysis suggests that review veracity (60.26–69.87%) is somewhat detectable but reviews additionally confounded with product-ownership (66.19–74.17%), or with data-origin (84.44–86.94%) are easier to classify. Review veracity is most easily classified if confounded with product-ownership and data-origin combined (87.78–88.12%). These findings are moderated by review polarity. Overall, our findings suggest that detection accuracy may have been overestimated in previous studies, provide possible explanations as to why, and indicate how future studies might be designed to provide less biased estimates of detection accuracy. 

PLoS ONE 17(12): 2022

By Sergi D. Bray , Shane D. Johnson and Bennett Kleinberg

Deepfakes’ are computationally created entities that falsely represent reality. They can take image, video, and audio modalities, and pose a threat to many areas of systems and societies, comprising a topic of interest to various aspects of cybersecurity and cybersafety. In 2020, a workshop consulting AI experts from academia, policing, government, the private sector, and state security agencies ranked deepfakes as the most serious AI threat. These experts noted that since fake material can propagate through many uncontrolled routes, changes in citizen behaviour may be the only effective defence. This study aims to assess human ability to identify image deepfakes of human faces (these being uncurated output from the StyleGAN2 algorithm as trained on the FFHQ dataset) from a pool of non-deepfake images (these being random selection of images from the FFHQ dataset), and to assess the effectiveness of some simple interventions intended to improve detection accuracy. Using an online survey, participants (N = 280) were randomly allocated to one of four groups: a control group, and three assistance interventions. Each participant was shown a sequence of 20 images randomly selected from a pool of 50 deepfake images of human faces and 50 images of real human faces. Participants were asked whether each image was AI-generated or not, to report their confidence, and to describe the reasoning behind each response. Overall detection accuracy was only just above chance and none of the interventions significantly improved this. Of equal concern was the fact that participants’ confidence in their answers was high and unrelated to accuracy. Assessing the results on a per-image basis reveals that participants consistently found certain images easy to label correctly and certain images difficult, but reported similarly high confidence regardless of the image. Thus, although participant accuracy was 62% overall, this accuracy across images ranged quite evenly between 85 and 30%, with an accuracy of below 50% for one in every five images. We interpret the findings as suggesting that there is a need for an urgent call to action to address this threat. 

Journal of Cybersecurity, 2023, 1–18