Investigating the Effects of Covid-19 on Online Shopping Cybercrime in Buffalo City

Abstract

Due to the unprecedented events of Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown regulations that were introduced by the government, online shopping became much more popular than it used to be, before the pandemic. This is because people needed to use the online shopping quite frequently for safety measures by keeping social distancing and avoiding overcrowd. However, as much as online shopping was a positive solution for shoppers, online criminals saw this as an opportunity to defraud people using crimeware such as identity theft, cloning of bank cards, and electronic stealing of money. Crimeware can spread by way of viruses, Trojan horse programs, worms, spyware or adware. Due to Covid-19, a higher number of people needed to stay indoors more, hence the need for the use of online shopping to buy groceries and other necessary goods has greatly increased. This rapid increase of online shopping has led to more people prone to cybercrime. However, the effect of Covid-19 lockdown regulation on online shopping cybercrime, especially in the developing nations, where computer security literacy level is still low, remains a research issue that needs to be addressed. Hence, this study investigates the effects of Covid-19 on cybercrime in online shopping using Buffalo City as a case study. Data was collected from 105 participants through a structured questionnaire. The data collected was analysed using statistical package. This research found that indeed Covid-19 had negatively affected people, especially online shoppers by increasing the number of fraud cases involving cybercrime. The study recommends that online shops improve the perception of their websites' trustworthiness through security certificates and secure payment facilities. It further recommends that online shops raise awareness of cybercrime to customers to help sensitize them.