Digital Theft: Concept, Contents, Victims and Their Classification

Abstract

The goal of the article is to develop some aspects in the theoretical basis of digital thefts’ victimology. A digital theft is understood as stealing digital identifiers, assets, utilitarian digital rights or technological resources through inputting, blocking and modifying computer information. A victim of digital theft is a physical (juridical) person who suffered property or other damage from the illegal seizure of the abovementioned intangible objects. The author suggests singling out the following types of victims, depending on the crimes: 1. Thefts of means of payment (electronic and cryptocurrency, token-actions, credit tokens). They are carried out by a third party gaining illegal access to the blockchain purse of the victim or unsanctioned transfers from it. 2. Thefts of information (passwords, access keys, personal identifiers, accounts, elements of a digital person). The main type of information to be compromised is the so-called governing information in its numerous forms. 3. Thefts of resources (computational capacities, traffic, electric energy). From the economic viewpoint, this is theft of key production capacities of the information era. This subgroup includes victims of computational capacities’ theft (unsanctioned use of the victim’s processor and appropriation of the capacities of personal computers without the knowledge of the user), internet traffic (tunnelling), electric energy (unlawful use of energy resources through unsanctioned connection to the network with the use of telecommunication technologies). The author draws some conclusions regarding the spread of such crimes and the traditional risk groups among Internet users who run a higher chance of the type of victimization under analysis. The topic of digital thefts is considered to be highly urgent and relevant for complex research in the spheres of cybercriminology, cybercriminalistics and cybervictimology. This is of principal importance in the conditions of the digital transformation of the economy and criminalization of new actions infringing on the electronic means of payment (such as thefts from a bank account or other actions involving digital currency included in Part 3, Art. 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).