Title :
Craigslist Scams and Community Composition: Investigating Online Fraud Victimization
Author :
Garg, Vaibhav ; Nilizadeh, Shirin
Abstract :
Offline, crime and resulting victimization is not individual incidence. It is also hampered or encouraged by the community in which it is situated. Are community characteristics relevant for victimization online? This paper examines the prevalence of Craigslist-based (automobile) scams across 30 American cities. Our methodology analyses historical scam data and its relationship with economic, structural, and cultural characteristics of the communities that are exposed to fraudulent advertising. We find that Craigslist scams are not random, but targeted towards specific communities. The resulting policy insight is for creating public awareness campaigns addressing educated white males, as they are the most vulnerable.
Keywords :
computer crime; cultural aspects; fraud; American cities; Craigslist scams; automobile scams; community characteristics; community composition; cultural characteristics; economic characteristics; fraudulent advertising; historical scam data analysis methodology; online fraud victimization; public awareness campaigns; structural characteristics; Automobiles; Cities and towns; Communities; Educational institutions; Sociology; Standards; Statistics; Craigslist; scam; policy; governance; cybercrime;
Conference_Titel :
Security and Privacy Workshops (SPW), 2013 IEEE
Conference_Location :
San Francisco, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4799-0458-7
DOI :
10.1109/SPW.2013.21
