Commentary
Cathryn Lavery
Abstract
The world of cybercrime has transformed significantly over the past ten or twenty years. Early concerns focused on the vulnerability of the financial industry, including the crimes of identity theft and hacking. However, in recent years, cybercrime has evolved to include crimes of harassment, child pornography, rape, “cyberterrorism” and even murder. This work examines an emerging form of violent crime involving the internet: Social Media Victim Targeting Networks (SVTN). The anonymity and limited available law enforcement on social media sites leaves predators with a large pool of vulnerable victims provide predators a new way to display and strengthen their criminological tendencies. The authors will discuss some of the expansion of victim targeting networks to popular Internet social networking sites using case examples that help develop concepts to better understand, prevent, and investigate the behavior. Based upon this, recommendations for future research related to this very serious and challenging behavior are noted.