ABSTRACT
One of the more intriguing developments in organised crime is the use of social networking tools to facilitate relationships between like-minded individuals through the creation of discussion forums. Criminal tactics, tensions between rivals and self-reflection on a life involved in crime can now be studied, largely unfiltered and unaltered by the presence of a researcher. This chapter explores the social networking among cybercriminals and how carding forums act as enablers for global criminal networking. Through the study of real discussions on one of the earliest carding forums, ShadowCrew, this chapter also examines the mythical representations of carders and exposes, through their own words, the complexity not just of carding, but their motivations and life experiences. By doing so, we hope to expose a world that transcends rational choice and routine activities perspectives, so prevalent in the criminological study of cybercrime. In essence, the aim of this chapter is to highlight carding forums as critical facilitators of cybercriminal networking and in doing so, this chapter adds further support to the notion that cybercriminals are not the empowered individuals of lore, but instead, by exploring their activity through well-grounded criminological theories, we argue that this form of deviant behaviour, like any other, is messy, contradictory and often counter-intuitive. It is often far from rational.
