Dr. Thomas Dearden

Our participants report seeing fake news on a variety of social media platforms. The three biggest were Facebook (30%), YouTube (15%), and Twitter (12%).

CPSVP faculty K Parti, T Dearden, J Hawdon, and colleagues from Hungary & Finland received funding from the Center for European Union Transatlantic and Trans-European Space Studies #virginiatech to collect data on #cybercrime perpetration and #cybervictimization in the 3 nations.

Are you a #cybercrime researcher? Our team @CPSVPVT has just published an open-access dataset on a nationally representative sample of adult Americans on #cyberoffending and #victimization. All are welcome to download and investigate: doi.org/10.7294/17092283

Online scams are everywhere, especially during the holidays. Our data @CybercriminologyLab show that computer familiarity (self-report) is not really a protective factor for #olderindividuals, especially when it doesn't pair with applying technical guardians.

Our data shows a small positive correlation (r=.05) between increased computer time and cybervictimization - lending modest support to Cohen and Felson’s routine activities theory and recent modifications of it to make it more applicable to the cyber world. #cybercriminologylab

We asked participants about a series of cyberoffending behavior, everything from distributing malware to online harassment. Like our victimization data, cyberoffening increased. We should note that the COVID-19 shutdown appeared to temporarily decrease cyberoffening

US launches bureau to combat cybercrime newsweek.com/us-launches-new… after rise in cyberattacks. Our surveys reflect this increase (see below). In 2019, 36.8% of participants reported victimization, 43.4% reported victimization in 2021, an increase of 17.9%.

Hello from the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention (CPSVP) at Virginia Tech. We are happy to announce the formation of the Cybercriminology Lab! Watch for more info from our ongoing study on cybercrime trends #VTcybercrimesurveys. More soon!