Cybercrime During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic

5Has Covid-19 Changed Fear and Victimization of Online Identity Theft in Portugal?

5.1. Introduction

The Internet plays a crucial role in daily life, allowing the use of several governmental, commercial, economic, financial, leisure and educational services (Grabosky and Smith 2001; Dias 2012). Therefore, nowadays, the Internet represents a pillar of the global economy, especially during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the undoubtable advantages that the Internet has brought, a set of criminal opportunities must be taken into consideration. In fact, with its fast and unprecedent development, new crimes have emerged, such as hacking, and others (traditional crimes) have been extended to cyberspace, such as different types of fraud (e.g. online identity theft (OIT)), cyberstalking or cyberbullying. This chapter will focus on the OIT, which is now considered one of the fastest growing online crimes (Golladay and Holtfreter 2016; Williams 2016), resulting in relevant financial losses for victims. Identity theft is the “unauthorized use or attempted use of an existing account (such as credit/debit cards, savings, telephone and online), the unauthorized use or attempted use of personal information to open a new account or misuse of personal information for a fraudulent purpose such as providing false information to law enforcement” (Harrell 2015, p. 2).

As previously mentioned, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the population changed their routines and multiple actions are ...