Formalising the procedure for identifying the personality characteristics of a potential cyber fraud victim

Abstract

The current state of the problem of cybercrime is considered and the most common types of cyber fraud are highlighted. The concept of cybervictimisation is described as a combination of personality traits characterising an increased level of propensity to become a victim of cybercrime. A procedure for identifying personality characteristics of individuals with increased cybervictimisation is proposed. Approaches to researching the relationship between the degree of expression of certain character traits and the manifestation of cybervictimisation are studied. The methods of psychological diagnostics for the purpose of identifying personality traits are considered. To determine the quantitative characteristics of the degree of manifestation of character traits, the 16-factor personality questionnaire of R. Kettell was used to test a sample of respondents who were subjected to fraudulent actions in cyberspace. The respondents were divided into two control groups – those who succumbed to the actions of cyber fraudsters and those who managed to resist them. For each respondent, a set of walls describing the degree of manifestation of the relevant character traits was obtained. The task was to identify the personality traits most characteristic of the respondents in each of the control groups by finding the greatest variation in the wall values for each of the character traits across the types of cyberfraud under consideration. The Mann-Whitney criterion was used to evaluate the differences in the respective samples of walls translated into a ranking scale. Using the analysis of asymptotic significance of differences in the average ranks, the character traits for which the reliability of differences is maximum were selected, and a matrix was constructed that allows characterising the propensity to be exposed to a certain type of cyber fraud by the most pronounced manifestation of these character traits. The obtained results were compared with published research results in this area, and their qualitative correspondence was revealed. The set of personality characteristics significative in terms of exposure to cyber fraud is generated. The direction of development of the topic under study is set.