Just Another Harmless Click of the Mouse ? An Empirical Evidence of Deviant Cyber Space Behaviour Using an Online Trap

We seek to understand cyber victimization by determining what users do online that makes them vulnerable to different forms of cyber attacks. We set up an online trap platform that presents users with legal and illegal contents and see whether people who visited the platform for the purposes of gaining access to legal material would also attempt to access illegal and/or pornographic material. We then empirically observed the behaviour of users with emphasis on those who attempted to indulge in cyber criminal activities. The online statistical tool AWStats is used in addition to a specially developed platform called “ resourcefulminds.com ”. Premised on a similar research by Silke and Demetriou (2003), findings from our study and analysis of the study population showed that 76% of users accessing both legal and illegal material and 10% restricting their access to just legal and 6% accessed just illegal material. 8% of users did not access any material beyond the homepage. Two significant phenomena were the observation that half the total number of registered users registered via crime related links and over 77% of users who visited the website were only on the site for less than 30 seconds. Our findings offer insights into why users are victimized online.