ABSTRACT
Over the last several decades, scholars have debated how cybercrime offending differs from traditional crime. The fi rst eight chapters of this text discuss how the reasons or motivations for cybercrime offending are typically the same as those for traditional offending. Financial incentive is a substantial motive for some hackers, malware writers, and virtually all fraudsters. Individuals who download legal and illegal pornography enjoy the easy access to material that satisfi es their sexual desires. Online harassment, similar to traditional bullying, allows someone to hurt others and therefore have power over them from a distance. There is also the thrill and rush associated with harassing others, downloading pornography, swindling others, and breaking into a computer system. Thus, Grabosky’s ( 2001 ) comment seems apt:
Computer crimes are driven by time-honoured motivations, the most obvious of which are greed, lust, power, revenge, adventure (p. 243),
and the desire to take “forbidden fruit.” None of the above motivations is new. The element of novelty resides in the unprecedented capacity of technology to facilitate acting on these motivations.
