Awareness Towards Cybercrime
Awareness Towards Cybercrime
Awareness Towards Cybercrime
Introduction
Received 31 July 2020 Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills
Revised 21 February 2021
Accepted 23 March 2021 values, beliefs and habits. The futuristic aim of education is to prepare students to access
PAGE 150 j SAFER COMMUNITIES j VOL. 20 NO. 3 2021, pp. 150-158, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1757-8043 DOI 10.1108/SC-07-2020-0026
knowledge anywhere anytime and collaborate both locally and globally. This provokes the
importance of using the computer technology along with other modern technologies in
classroom teaching. Thanks to the computer, mobile and internet technology which is
integrated into every part of a new age school. It will not be the classrooms that will
change,; it is going to change every aspect of teaching and learning. The cyber world
provides all sorts of required information to the students, and it is a whole lot of knowledge
that a child can gain from the internet. The possible advantage of implementing the internet
in the classroom is as diverse as the services and tools offered by the network.
The internet also houses the controversial materials that many adults prefer not to have
available to the children for various reasons. Thus, they are at the verge of becoming a victim
of cybercrime, i.e. an easy target for cyber criminals committing various types of cybercrimes.
In some cases, it is also possible to unintentionally commit a cybercrime. Adolescence and
below adolescence students are more likely to be a target of cybercrime (Radnofsky, 2006).
Privacy of children on the Web is a major concern regarding their safety (Kumar et al., 2018).
Teenagers are not bothered by cybercrime because they are in conflict with law/school
regulations which led them to commit the piracy of school work and projects (Satarch, 2011).
Some children and adults who are not familiar with new technology unintentionally commit
cybercrime (Delgado, 2012). The elderly population is especially at risk when it comes to
fraudulent activity (Appelt, 2016). At the university level, undergraduate perceive cybercrime
as a tool for personal development (Igba, 2018). This usually happens because adolescence
students try to build their dominating personality against the existing system. Not only students
of younger age and adolescence adults and teachers are also soft targets for hackers since
they are often ill equipped to deal with cyber criminals (Turner, 2018). Tremendous growth in
the use of interned also increased global spam rate, malware rate and phishing rate rapidly,
bank account frauds as a cybercrime has also increased on a greater rate (Deshmukh and
Chaudhary, 2014). Denial of service increased in newbies joining the forums of internet based
services (Imperva, 2012). There is an integral socio technical approach to computer crime
problem. It needs to establish where the social and psychological lines are drawn between
normal and deviant and split into two polar groups between them there is mutual
incomprehension which led them to commit non ethical tasks (Sherizen, 1991). Traditional
crimes increasingly have a digital component (Leukfeldt, 2017). It is seen that in addition to
victims only there is a victim offender overlap for cybercrime and this could at least practically
be the result of overlapping risk factors that are related to the digital context in which both
male and female offending and victimization (Kranenbarg, 2019). Thus being a victim of
traditional crime is a significant predictor of cyber victimization (Mindrilla, 2015). This also
backs that increased levels of cyber victimization predicted higher levels of fear and avoiding
behaviors, heaving fewer friends, carrying a weapon and in turn engagement into physical
conflicts among students. This is usually because the students are not aware of any solution to
avoid cyber victimization other than the basic steps such as ignoring the bully or telling to
leave them alone (Woda, 2013). In schools cyberbullying between peers does exist with
approximately one in a six student is a victim of cyberbullied by the peers and it continues to
the adult life emerging adult cyberbullying (Wozencroft, 2015). It is important to raise
awareness of students, teachers, parents and school administrators about cyber security, and
there is a need to establish cyber security high schools (Tosun et al., 2020) and cybercrime
detection in text-based communications (Mbaziira, 2019) among students should be regularly
monitored by the authorities to overcome this situation. It is usually predicted that male
students are more internet addicts than that of female students (Shehzadi, 2017) but studies
showed higher prevalence of traditional victimization than cyber victimization for both genders.
The prevalence of being a victim of either type of victimization is significantly higher for boys
than girls (Ida, 2016). Girls reportedly being more involved in cyberbullying as victims than
boys while boys are reportedly more involved with cyberbullying as bullies than girls (Lapidot
and Dolev, 2014). These two studies contradicts in case of victimization and needs to be
further investigated in the current scenario to get a clear picture. In some cases usually levels
Research questions
RQ1. What is the existing status of cybercrime awareness among senior secondary level
students?
RQ2. Is there any role of gender and school management influencing cybercrime
awareness among senior secondary level students?
RQ3. What are the possible effective solutions for reducing cybercrime among senior
secondary level students?
Objectives
Hypotheses
Table 4 indicates that the t-value is found to be 0.85 for male and female with the mean values
of 139.32 and 141.14, respectively, which is not significant at 0.05 level of significance for df
98. It means that there is no significant difference between the cybercrime awareness of male
and female students. Thus, the null hypothesis that “There is no significant difference between
the awareness towards cybercrime of male and female senior secondary level students” is not
rejected. Further, between government and self-finance senior secondary schools, the t-value
is found to be 0.87 with mean values of 141.48 and 139.58, respectively, which is not
significant at 0.05 level of significance for df 98. It means that there is no significant difference
between the cybercrime awareness of students of government and self-finance schools. Thus,
the null hypothesis that “There is no significant difference between the awareness towards
cybercrime of students of government and self-finance senior secondary schools” is not
rejected. Also the average of excellent awareness category and high awareness category for
government schools is 22.50 and for self-finance schools is 19.00 which indicates that though
self-finance students poses high level of cybercrime awareness in excellent awareness
category but government school students poses high level of cybercrime awareness in high
average category. The average indicates that government and self-finance school students
poses a high level of cybercrime awareness and between them government school students
shown slight high level of cybercrime awareness than self-finance school students although
difference between them is not significant. A pictorial representation (vide Figure 1) of the
means of cybercrime awareness of the two groups also confirm this fact.
Further, for the first research question by the given data it is evident that the existing status of
cybercrime awareness among a major portion of students is found to be very high and rest of
them have moderate cybercrime awareness. The second research question resembles that
though female student’s poses slight high cybercrime awareness than male students but the
difference is not significant also the government school student’s poses slight high cybercrime
awareness than self-finance school students but the difference again found is not significant.
This implies that gender and school management type are not the predictors of cybercrime
awareness and in the present scenario contradicts to Ida (2016) and Lapidot and Dolev (2014).
Conclusion
In conclusion, provided by the data it is evident that the change in school management type
does not affect the cybercrime awareness of the student’s and school management is not a
predictor of cybercrime awareness also no major change regarding cybercrime awareness
is found due to gender difference among the students. Thus gender also is not a predictor
of cybercrime awareness. In the study, none of the students shown below average or low
average awareness towards cybercrime. In the study Slight differences in cybercrime
awareness between male and female groups and between government and self-finance
groups are found which is due to their involvement in various awareness activities provided
by the schools and from their social environment. Following this, there are various multiple
visible and latent factors which affect the cybercrime awareness of an individual, needs to
be further investigated.
Implications
Cybercrime among secondary school students plays a destructive role in their academic as
well as social life and will bring low integrity to the education sector if not being controlled
within time. Following measures on the basis of this study should be taking to avoid this
situation:
䊏 Policymakers, various societies involved in investigating cyber behavior/child
computer interaction/safer communities etc. should consider that school management
is not a predictor of cybercrime along with gender and can look for other possible
visible and latent factors affecting cybercrime awareness among students while
formulating a policy or designing a course/prevention programs for secondary school
students.
䊏 School administration should consider the existing gender and school management
roles of present scenario to make effective policies for the students and providing them
effective cybercrime prevention programs and activities. Also, Parents can adequately
understand the role of school management type and gender of their belongings to
understand their cybercrime awareness and take necessary measures accordingly.
Future scope
In this study, though the significant amount of information was gathered from the
respondents with respect to their responses on their awareness towards cybercrime and
the role of school management in determining the cybercrime awareness of the students
the study was limited in terms of sample size and region thus the present study opens
up the relevance of further research in this concerned area opting a large sample size and
including students from elementary, secondary and undergraduate levels in India and other
countries as well to make schools a safer place.
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Corresponding author
Mudit Kumar Verma can be contacted at: [email protected]
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