Bio:

Markus Riek is a first-year PhD student at the Information Systems department at the University of Münster (WWU), who focuses on the social and economic impact of cybercrimes. He joined the Information Security Research Group at Prof. Rainer Böhme’s chair in 2013 after receiving his master's degree in Information Systems at the WWU. His scientific career started at the Institute for Medical Informatics (IMI), where he worked as a research assistant during his master degree. He recently returned from an international research exchange at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas.

Abstract:

Consumer-oriented cybercrime is a pervasive threat for today’s Internet-dependent society. While the real extent and economic impact of cybercriminal attacks are hard to quantify, scientists and officials agree that it is a huge and still growing problem. A substantial fraction of cybercrime’s overall costs to society can be traced to indirect opportunity costs, which result from untapped online services. Understanding the factors behind Internet users’ hesitation to participate online is an important prerequisite to understand and cope with the global cybercrime problem.

In the seminar Markus Riek will present a theoretical model to explain the impact of cybercrime on consumers’ online behavior. He will show how technology acceptance models can be combined with insights from criminology to identify factors that drive online service avoidance. The model explains how prior cybercrime victimization, media reports about cybercrime, and the perceived risk of becoming a victim increase avoidance of three different online services: online banking, online shopping and online social networking. Markus will provide empirical evidence for the effects using structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques based on a secondary analysis of the Special Eurobarometer 390, a pan-European survey.