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The psychology of cybercrime
The psychology of cybercrime

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3 Victim’s experience of cybercrime

You have seen in the previous sections that the accurate distinction between different types of cybercrime can be difficult.

However, regardless of the specific type of cybercrime experienced, a common research finding is that it can have adverse consequences for its victims. Cyber-victimisation can be seen to have similar social, psychological and physiological effects to those experienced by people victimised in the parallel offline offences. This suggests that cybercrimes should be responded to with equal concern to their offline equivalents. For instance, the effects of cyberbullying are similar to those of traditional bullying (Smith et al. 2008). In the same respect, Dreßing et al. (2014) identify that the impact of cyberstalking is similar to that of offline stalking. However, there is, as yet, little research that looks at the effects of trolling on those targeted.

An image of a young person leaning against a bed with a laptop on their lap, arms folded and looking at the laptop.