SAFEGUARDING AGAINST ROMANCE SCAMS – USING PROTECTION MOTIVATION THEORY

Online dating offers new opportunities for individuals to seek a romantic partner; however, the platform has also been exploited by criminals seeking to perpetrate scams, classified as online dating (romance) fraud. These are arguably one of the most distressing frauds, as victims suffer both financially and emotionally. Thus, this emergent issue has fielded increasing attention from diverse disciplines, though research still remains limited – in particular, investigation of romance fraud from a risk mitigation and information systems (IS) approach has been neglected. This study begins to address these shortfalls by utilising Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) as a framework for understanding the factors and processes underlying intention to use protective tools safeguarding against online dating (OD) scams. The results of Partial Least Squares analysis showed the perceptions and importance of PMT factors differs among protection mechanisms, highlighting the need to better understand and thus enhance the mechanisms based on empirical evidence. Additionally, an online dater‘s assessment of the protective mechanism (and protective response) generally has a greater influence on adopting protective behaviour, than the evaluation of the scam itself

The Restrictive Deterrent Effect of Warning Messages Sent to Active Romance Fraudsters: An Experimental Approach

Victims of romance fraud experience both a financial and emotional burden. Although multiple studies have offered insight into the correlates of perpetration and victimization, no known study has examined if, and how, romance fraud can be curtailed. The current study uses a randomized experimental design to test the restrictive deterrent effect of warning messages sent to romance fraudsters via email. We find that active romance fraudsters who receive a deterrence message, instead of non-deterrence messages, respond at a lower rate; and, among those who respond, use fewer words and have a lower probability of seeking reply without denying wrongdoing. The results provide support for restrictive deterrence in cyberspace. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed

Rationalizing Online Romance Fraud: In the Eyes of the Offender

This study seeks to understand romance scam from the offenders\u27 perspective and how they rationalize their motivations, opportunities and abilities towards the commission of the crime. To this end, we adopt the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability framework and the Rationalization dimension of the Fraud Triangle Theory. The study employed a qualitative methodological approach to analyze the opportunities presented by emerging technologies to cyber fraudsters amid socio-economic drivers. One is the interplay of various socio-economic factors being a major driving force behind the commission of cybercrime. These include peer recruitment and training, poverty, unemployment, low level of education and low income. The uniqueness of this study stems from the fact that it deviates from previous studies to investigate cybercrime from the perspective of the perpetrators. Again, this study is arguably one of the first to put all three dimensions of the MOA framework and the rationalization dimension of the Fraud Triangle to study romance scammers\u27 behaviors

What Do We Know About Online Romance Fraud Studies? A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature (2000 to 2021)

We aimed to identify the critical insights from empirical peer-reviewed studies on online romance fraud published between 2000 and 2021 through a systematic literature review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol. The corpus of studies that met our inclusion criteria comprised twenty-six studies employing qualitative (n = 13), quantitative (n = 11), and mixed (n = 2) methods. Most studies focused on victims, with eight focusing on offenders and fewer investigating public perspectives. All the victim-focused studies relied on data from the Global North, except for Malaysia. Five offender-focused studies used online data available in the public domain, and three derived their data from West Africa. Our review highlights offenders' techniques to deceive and manipulate victims, as revealed in these studies, and highlights some limitations of offender- and victim-focused studies. The dominant framework used across the studies was found to be the “Scammers Persuasive Techniques Model.” While this framework provides a helpful way of considering the stages of victim involvement, it also faces some limitations, which we highlight. Our study reviews the current state of empirical knowledge on romance fraud and identifies certain gaps and biases in the literature. We argue there is a need for further research into online romance fraud to enhance our understanding of it both from the perspective of the offender as well as the experience of the victim. We also highlight the need for a more inclusive and greater range of regional and global diverse range of data sources and perspectives. Given the scale and impact of online romance fraud, we conclude that its study would benefit from a richer empirical engagement that recognizes it as both a regional and global phenomenon

Three essays on socially engineered attacks : the case of online romantic scams

The Internet has transformed the way people initiate and nurture romantic relationships. With the continued adoption of social media and online dating platforms, love, literally, is in the air. A recent report indicates that 30% of the U.S. adults have experience using online dating platforms, and 11% of the U.S. adults have used the platform in the past year. However, cybercriminals see a massive opportunity to defraud this emerging demography of online daters by launching online romance scams. The scammers pretend to engage in a romantic relationship with the victim through online platforms and eventually defraud the victim financially. Online romance scam became apparent around 2008, and now it is one of the widely reported cybercrimes. People from developed countries such as the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia face millions of dollars in financial loss from online romance scams, as evident from the public agency reports. In addition to the financial loss, online romance scam victims face significant emotional loss and psychological distress from the betrayal by someone they love. Extant research in information systems, cybersecurity, and criminology investigates online romance scams extensively to better understand this phenomenon. Current literature on online romance scam studies the process of scam, predictors of scam victimization, persuasion and deception techniques used by scammers, human and technical level prevention mechanisms, and rationalizing of the scam from the offender perspective. The first two essays of this dissertation look into two significant but understudied aspects of online romance scam: the impact of psychological stressors around online romance scam on online dating psychological capital and the impact of scammer’s representation of love on online romance scam gullibility of the victims. In the first essay, we integrate the Etiology of Fear Theory, Broaden-Build Theory, and Fear of Crime Framework to check how online dater’s negative psychological states such as anxiety, cognitive vulnerability, social vulnerability, and victimization fear directly or indirectly reduce positive psychology in online dating. This essay employs a sequential mixed-method design with a qualitative phase followed by a quantitative survey. Drawing from the Triangle Theory of Love, Social Exchange Theory, and Theory of Mood-Congruent Judgement, the second essay argues that if the scammers show a higher degree of love in the scam grooming stage, then the victim will be more gullible to fall for the online romance scam through the mechanisms of relationship trust and relationship satisfaction. This essay runs two scenario-based experiments to test the hypotheses. The third essay focuses on the impact of state-level cybercrime governance measure namely cybersecurity taskforce in reducing metro city-level social engineering frauds, including online romance scams. This essay uses a 10-year panel data from the U.S. to conduct a nationwide quasi-experiment. The results show state-level cybersecurity taskforce has deterrence effect in reducing social engineering fraud in metro city-level only in the states where the governance complexity is low. The empirical findings are consistent with the concepts of Stackelberg Security Game. Each essays outlines theoretical and managerial implications. The overarching theoretical contributions of this dissertation are finding – 1) how the negative emotional experiences surrounding online romance scam have detrimental effect on the positive experience on online dating, 2) how scammer’s grooming technique leads to online romance scam gullibility of the victims, and 3) how state-level governance can deter social engineering frauds including online romance scam. The findings of the essays will be useful for the online daters, online dating platforms, and regulatory authorities to make the online dating space a safer place to initiate and nurture romantic relationships and to reduce the economic losses from social engineering attacks

Social World Sensing via Social Image Analysis from Social Media

Social imagery, the visuals shared by users via various platforms and applications, may be analyzed to elicit something of massmind (and individual) thinking. This work involves the exploration of seven topics from various subject areas (global public health, environmentalism, human rights, political expression, and human predation) through social imagery and data from social media. The coding techniques involve manual coding, the integration of multiple social data streams, computational text analysis, data visualizations, and other combinations of approaches.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1037/thumbnail.jp