Underlying Causes of Cyber-Criminality and Victimization: An Empirical Study on Students

Abstract

In Bangladesh, like all other countries of the world the frequency of cyber-crime is increasing over the time. Generally, crime is defined by law as a territorial phenomenon in the way the law is territorial in nature. However, due to the global connectivity and online activities cyber crime has become a global matter, not a territorial one and is spreading in a terrific volume. Many of the students who study in the university level also without knowing the furiousness about the nature of cyber crime are being involved in such crime in various ways. This study therefore, is an effort to understand the involvement of students in cyber crime with or without their knowledge regarding the malicious sides of it. Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University was selected as the study area for the present study and a number of 175 undergraduate students have been interviewed during the time frame of June to October, 2014 to know their involvement as stakeholders in the same. This study has yielded some interesting findings about cyber criminality and victimization status of the students as like nature of victimization, way of victimization, victim offender relationships, types of cc, nature of cc criminal etc. Most of the studied respondents have a little or no knowledge regarding cyber crime and they are involved in such crime as offender just for mere interest and not for the illegal monetary gain; most of the respondents have also encountered one or many of the cyber crimes in their online activities. Psychological motivation is one of the main causes behind cyber-criminality of such youths and it is pertinent from the study that a very few of them is aware about the Information and Communication Technology (Amendment) Act, 2013 of Bangladesh.