US cybercrime units on the world wide web

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to quantify the number of cybercrime units that are on the world wide web and the manner in which they represent themselves, and to clarify how they are communicating information to their constituency (i.e. the visitors to their site) through new technology.Design/methodology/approach – There is no sampling frame that serves as an exhaustive list of law enforcement departments with web sites, nor law enforcement departments with computer crime units, nor law enforcement departments with cybercrime unit web sites. As such, the world wide web was combed using popular search engines to find as many US‐based cybercrime unit web sites as possible. The final sample size was 88.Findings – The findings suggest that though cybercrime units across the USA typically have similar missions (e.g. to respond to one or more forms of computer crime), they used their self‐representing web site in different ways. Beyond providing basic contact information and details about the cybercri...

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