Routine activities and consumer fraud victimization: findings from a social survey in Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Consumer protection and financial regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) regulate various types of consumer, investor and financial frauds. Whether required or not, rulemaking proceedings oftentimes include some form of benefit-cost analysis. Thus, the benefits of proposed regulations – whether fully quantified or not – are an increasingly important component of rulemaking decisions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the impact on victims in some cases includes significant time and financial hardships and even pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life. Further, the existence of these offenses causes nonvictims to take costly precautionary behavior and might even inhibit legitimate business activities. Yet, little is known about the true costs of consumer and financial crimes other than the out-of-pocket monetary losses incurred by victims. To the extent society wishes to optimally deter such crimes, without better data on nonmonetary costs, any benefit-cost analyses of criminal justice or prevention programs designed to reduce these crimes will inevitably underestimate program benefits. This paper provides an initial framework and empirical estimates of the willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce four types of white-collar and corporate offenses – consumer fraud, financial fraud, corporate crime, and corporate financial crime. Utilizing a contingent valuation survey approach that has been used to estimate the cost of street crimes, the average WTP for a 10% reduction in each of these four offenses is estimated to range between $35 and $85 per household. In the case of consumer fraud and financial fraud, where estimates of prevalence are available, this translates into a WTP of $1200 per consumer fraud and $12,000 for financial fraud. In contrast, the out-of-pocket costs to victims of consumer fraud have been estimated to average about $100, and about $200 to $250 for various types of financial frauds. These figures also compare favorably to the WTP for a reduced household burglary of $19,000.

Willingness to Pay to Reduce White Collar and Corporate Crime

‘Bought it, but never got it.’ An empirical examination of online fraud victimization Consumer fraud seems to be widespread, yet little research is devoted to understanding why certain social groups are more vulnerable to this type of victimization than others. The present paper deals with internet consumer fraud victimization, and uses an explanatory model that combines insights from self control theory and routine activity theory. The results from large-scale victimization survey data among the Dutch general population (N=6,201) reveal that people with low self-control run substantially higher victimization risk, as well as people performing ‘risky’ routine activities, such as online shopping and participation in online forums. Though a minority share of the self-control-victimization link is indirect – because people with low self-control are more involved in risk-enhancing routine activities – a large direct effect on internet fraud victimization remains. This suggests that, within similar situations, people with poor impulse control respond differently to deceptive online commercial offers.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates consumer fraud costs Australians $1.4b per year. Advances in technology allow fraudsters to reach an increasing number of potential victims. Age has long been considered a potential factor in the risk of victimisation; however, it remains unclear which age groups are most vulnerable. This paper examines the relationship between age and the risk of consumer fraud, using the results of online surveys conducted by the AIC on behalf of the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce in 2011 and 2012. The surveys found statistically significant relationships between age and how invitations were received; age and frauds resulting in victimisation; and age and those who sent money in response to invitations. Targeted, age-specific awareness-raising campaigns may be an effective means of reducing the risk of consumer fraud. Initiatives that address the risks associated with lifestyle factors such as social networking, online dating and the use of both new and existing technologies may be of particular benefit.

A number of real-life social networks provide the users with proximity-based services. This feature exposes to seri-ous privacy threats, because it could allow massive tracking from an honest-but-curious provider. Whilst proximity-based services have been deeply studied in the literature in a general setting, no solution (to the best of our knowledge) has been provided to the problem of delivering privacy-preserving proximity-based services entirely within existing social networks. The problem is not trivial, because a social network provider can play as a global passive adversary, monitoring the flow of all the messages exchanged in the network. Therefore, to allow proximity testing between Alice and Bob not requiring that they reveal their position to the social network provider is not enough. Indeed, even the fact that proximity testing is performed between Alice and Bob (independently of the result) is a serious privacy leakage. In this paper, we provide a solution preventing also this privacy leak, giving thus a concrete way to implement privacy-preserving proximity-based services in social networks.

These days, social networking sites are more popular than ever, with some sites having dozens or even hundreds of millions of users. At the same time, users on these sites are sharing an unprecedented amount of personal information, generating serious privacy concerns. Personal and sensitive content shared by users on social network sites is barely protected from access by unauthorized users and the Social Networking Provider (SNP) itself always has access to all content. To solve this problem, some existing solutions solicit an external third-party server to provide online privacy protection of content shared by users on social networking sites; other solutions incur a key distribution overhead among the users who are sharing content. These solutions usually have a noticeable impact on the user experience, or are susceptible to single-point-of-failure problems by requiring an external server.In this paper, we propose a new solution which can achieve the following two desirable features through a novel application of a constant-size-ciphertext broadcast encryption scheme: (1) content posted by a user can only be read by authorized users and nobody else, not even the SNP itself; (2) no key distribution or any external server is necessary during normal operations. Apart from a key extraction server which is contacted only once by each user during an initial registration, the system is self-contained within the web browser (using a plugin) of each user. The system can be used directly with existing social networking sites. We also implemented a prototype for Facebook and perform a thorough evaluation which shows that the scheme is feasible, scalable and practical.KeywordsSocial Networking SiteOnline Social NetworkExternal ServerEncrypt MessageBroadcast EncryptionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how the introduction of new communication channels facilitates interactive information sharing and collaboration between various actors over social networking services and how social networking fits in the existing European legal framework on data protection. The paper also aims to discuss some specific data protection issues, focusing on the role of the relevant actors, using the example of photo tagging.Design/methodology/approachPrivacy in social networks is one of the main concerns for providers and users. This paper examines the role of the main actors in social networking, i.e. the providers and the users, scrutinised under the light of the European data protection legislation. Specifically, how social networking service providers deal with users' privacy and how users handle their personal information, if this manipulation is complied with the respective legislation and how “tagging”, one of the most familiar services provided by the social networking providers, may cause privacy risks.FindingsSocial networking is one of the most remarkable cultural phenomena that has blossomed in the Web 2.0 era. They enable the connection of users and they facilitate the exchange of information among them. However, the users reveal vast amounts of personal information over social networking services, without realising the privacy and security risks arising from their actions. The European data protection legislation could be used as a means for protecting the users against the unlawful processing of their personal information, although a number of problems arise regarding its applicability.Originality/valueThe paper discusses some privacy concerns involved in social networks and examines how social networking service providers and users deal with personal information with regard to the European data protection legislation.

The proliferation of online social networking websites has resulted in the growth of online communities and increased communication among users. However, sharing personal information can pose a privacy threat to users, leaving them vulnerable to attacks like blackmail and fraud. Also, with the rise in scandals such as Geofeedia and Cambridge Analytica, as well as Facebook’s admission of sharing user data with top mobile phone manufacturers, worries about privacy on social networking platforms have become increasingly palpable. This paper discusses the privacy risks of sharing personal information on social networking websites. The proposed approaches offer a comprehensive protection of user privacy and prevents unauthorized access to user’s data and information by social network providers and unauthorized users. The study employs a preferential selective encryption approach that encompasses not only tweets but also other personally identifiable components, including images, memes, and metadata. This approach serves as a comprehensive solution to encrypt all elements within a social network, making it a one-stop destination for privacy protection in online social networks (OSN). When compared to other investigated schemes, the proposed approach significantly reduces privacy leakage to 0.48 units while achieving a high utility score of 0.8116 units for non-sensitive attributes in tweets. Moreover, it demonstrates remarkable performance in maintaining sensitive information coverage with notably minimal information loss: 0.4 units for images, 0.3 units for memes, and 12.7 units for metadata. Thus, in essence these findings, backed by quantifiable measures of privacy and utility, strongly validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in achieving a superior balance between privacy preservation and utility when compared to its contemporaries, particularly in applications like online social networks (OSNs). Furthermore, the suggested method’s architecture makes it platform-neutral; it can be customized for any social networking website, such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and it may include any attribute that the user chooses to keep private.

In an online social network, users exhibit personal information to enjoy social interaction. The social network provider (SNP) exploits users’ information for revenue generation through targeted advertisement, in which the SNP presents advertisements to proper users effectively. Therefore, an advertiser is more willing to pay for targeted advertisement to promote his product. However, the over-exploitation of users’ information would invade users’ privacy, which would negatively impact users’ social activeness. Motivated by this, we study the privacy policy (policies) of the SNP(s) with targeted advertisement, in both monopoly and duopoly markets. We characterize the privacy policy in terms of the fraction of users’ information that the provider should exploit, and formulate the interactions among users, advertiser, and SNP(s) as a three-stage Stackelberg game. By leveraging the model’s supermodularity property, we prove the threshold structure of users’ equilibrium information levels. We discover the overall information that can be exploited by an SNP is non-monotonic in the exploitation fraction. Monopoly (one SNP) study shows our proposed optimal privacy policy helps the SNP earn even more advertisement revenue than full exploitation policy does. The situation of the duopoly market is much more complicated. In that case, if the service quality gap between the two SNPs is large, the stronger SNP will choose a conservative privacy protection policy that drives the other SNP out of the market. However, if the service quality gap is small and the advertisement revenue is promising, the stronger SNP would choose an aggressive policy to exploit the advertisement revenue and both SNPs will have positive market shares.

Social media, especially social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook have grown rapidly in popularity in the last ten years. [...]

Social network (SN) sites (SNSs) surged recently all over the world and have become new platforms for intimate communications. As the functionality of SNs was enhanced, users’ own information can be collected, stored, and manipulated much more easily. Privacy concerns have thus become the most concerned issue by both users and SN service providers. The service providers intend to maximize the profits and need to consider how users’ confidential information can be fully utilized in marketing and operations. At the same time, users usually concern over the misuse of private information by the website operations at the moment when disclosing individual details on SNSs. Apparently, a significant gap exists between the website operators’ intention to fully utilize the private information as well as the users’ privacy concerns about disclosing information on the SNSs. Such a cognition gap, or the “privacy paradox”, influences users’ trust on a specific SNS directly and further influences users’ acceptance and continuous usage of the sites. In this study, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was introduced as the theoretical basis by applying users’ private disclosure behavior, disclosure risks perception, and the extent of privacy settings in the SNSs as the main variables. In addition, in the past works, researchers found that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and the interaction strength for modern technology services or products influence the use intention. So, these factors were also added as research variables in the analytic model. The Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory Based Network Process (DNP) was introduced construct the influence relationships between the variables. The weights being associated with the variables can be derived accordingly. By using the analytic model, the variables which can influence the privacy paradox on user’s trust of SNs can be derived. Such variables and influence relationships can be used in developing the security policies of the SNSs.

The purpose of this study is to explore the experience of the consultant’s usage on social-network and the subsequent decisions made To this end, the following four issues will be the focus of this research: the motivation and current state of the consultant’s usage on social networking sites; the consultant’s personal decision-making considerations on social networking sites; the challenges faced by the consultant on social networking sites; the consultant’s perspective on “the usage on social networking Accordingly, the research methods used will be purposive sampling and semi-structured in-depth interviews. First, six consultants would be invited to participate in the research on the usage for social networking sites. Next, the data collected through interviews would be organized, summarized and analyzed with grounded theory. Finally, the results of the study will be discussed comprehensively. Interviewee responses to the research questions: 1.The motivation and current state of the consultant’s usage on social networking The motivation for the respondents to apply for a social networking site is to interact with friends. The current state of the respondents’ usage on social networking can be summarized as follows: respondents who have long term experience in social networking will have more than one personal site; the direction of writing and the presentation of content, will be affected by the features of social networking sites, which also affects the relationship with the audience. Furthermore, the micro-blog type community site has become an integral part of the respondents’ lives. 2.Consultant’s personal decision-making considerations on the usage on social networking There are several considerations that factor into the consultants’ decisions when using the social networking sites: openness of the community site itself, ease of to spreading on the network, convenience for browsing, privacy of their own and others, personal confidentiality and protection of personal rights and interests. Furthermore, the potential ability of social networking to influence others is an important consideration for consultants due to their roles and responsibilities. 3.The challenges faced by the consultants on social networking (A)Respondents experienced negative emotions after prying into certain cases on social networking out of curiosity. (B)Respondents with the aforementioned experience tend to readjust their perspective and actions on social networking sites. 4.The consultant’s perspective on “the usage on social networking sites (A)Consultants should not be denied the right to use social networking due to their profession. However, consultants should use such with professional integrity. (B)The ability of consultants to understand the purpose of using social networking and the information to be conveyed would enable them to have a clear concept of appropriate message content. (C)Consultants would be able to avoid posting inappropriate messages on social networking if they have a good sense of self-awareness, and are able to reflect and assess the issue on hand. (D)Consultants need to pay attention to the content of messages on community websites as they have no control over the audiences’ interpretation of it. (E)Consultants should remain professional on social networking and this includes refraining from criticisms and inferences. Discoveries derived from analysis of the interview data: 1.Psychology consultants deem that social networking have become an interactive tool that is indispensable in both life and work 2.Psychology consultants’ value of individual privacy and are conscious of their input on social networking site. 3.Psychology consultants create an identity and role for themselves through the Internet and social networking 4.Psychology consultants are affected by their professional role and ethics responsibilities when using social networking sites. 5.Psychology consultants tend to be concerned over how individuals perceive the information they posted on social networking sites. 6.Psychology consultants believe that their messages on social networking may subconsciously affect the discussion on these sites. 7.Psychology consultants are influenced by their training in ethics and this makes them extra cautious when using social networking sites. 8.Psychology consultants tend to attempt to separate the “professional” and the “personal” on social networking sites. The following conclusion can be drawn from the above research and analysis of the results: 1.Recommendations for consultants (A)The importance of the effects of personal network-related messages on the consultant’s profession, work and case relationship (B)The intention usage, and function of social networking requires care and consideration. (C)In cases of ethical dilemma, consultants should seek advice and discussion with other professionals. 2.Recommendations for consultants’ training programs (A)Inclusion of Internet knowledge in training programs so consultants are familiar with its potential. (B)There should be a focus on the ethics training of consultants. 3.Recommendations for the future research (A)Public opinion on consultants’ usage of social networking sites. Consultants’ years of service can be included as a factor in the study.

Third-party apps for social networking sites have emerged as a popular feature for online social networks, and are used by millions of users every day. In exchange for additional features, users grant third parties access to their personal data. However, these third parties do not necessarily protect the data to the same extent as social network providers. To automatically analyze the unique privacy and security issues of social networking applications on a large scale, we propose a novel framework, called AppInspect. Our framework enumerates available social networking apps and collects metrics such as the personal information transferred to third party developers. AppInspect furthermore identifies web trackers, as well as information leaks, and provides insights into the hosting infrastructures of apps. We implemented a prototype of our novel framework to evaluate Facebook's application ecosystem. Our evaluation shows that AppInspect is able to detect malpractices of social networking apps in an automated fashion. During our study we collaborated with Facebook to mitigate shortcomings of popular apps that affected the security and privacy of millions of social networking users.

Summary Financial abuse is the most common type of elder abuse. Consumer fraud, a form of financial abuse perpetrated by criminals who do not know the victim, is not well studied. Seniors represent a disproportionate percentage of the victims of consumer fraud. This article reviews the data on the prevalence of consumer fraud (primarily telemarketing scams) in Canada. It examines the reasons why Canadian seniors are targets of fraud. It also describes many unique initiatives developed at the local, provincial and national level in Canada to educate seniors and those who care for them about the types of scams and the risks of fraud.

Automatic monitoring of cyberbullying on social networking sites: From technological feasibility to desirability