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The Australian Signals Directorate describes phishing as 'a way criminals trick you into giving them personal information'. This information could be addresses, bank details, or passwords, with this information, offenders may be able to steal your identity online, steal your money, and leave you in a devastating situation.

Phishing falls under one of the three generations of cybercrime, discussed by David Wall. The second generation of cybercrime is considered "hybrid" cybercrime, in which traditional crimes are granted global opportunities through the use of technology.

The digital crime of phishing is considered to be cyber-enabled, seeing how phishing can happen digitally, it is also possible to deceive people to acquire their personal information and thus cannot be considered cyber-dependent. This can be achieved by getting names or signatures for a petition or survey that may not exist.

Phishing is also connected with other digital crimes, such as online identity theft due to the acquisition of personal details, which can further lead to the opportunity for identity theft.

However, it is not just civilians who fall victim to phishing. between 2013 and 2015, Google and Facebook had fallen victim to a phishing attack that cost them $120 million dollars. The Lithuanian man named Evaldas Rimasauskas had sent false invoices to employees of these companies, explaining that the bank details for a large company that both victim companies worked with had changed, which in turn was paid into this new account owned by Rimasauskas.

Rimasauskas was arrested in 2017 by Lithuanian authorities and pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in 2019, in which he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. In addition to his prison sentence, he was ordered to forfeit roughly $50 million dollars and pay $26 million in restitution.

It has not been reported why Rimasauskas took part in this extreme phishing scheme; however, it can be hypothesised it was for the monetary reward of the crime.

Jonathan Polonitza, who works for the FBI, had stated that “Unfortunately, this is happening to a lot of companies because it’s a crime that can be committed from the other side of the world." This highlights a major challenge in the fight against cybercrime, which is both jurisdictional discrepancies when the offender is apprehended, but the challenge to locate and apprehend the offender in the first place.

It is possible for international authorities to work together in order to find these offenders, however, differing political standpoints can prevent international collaboration, leading to offenders getting away with their crimes.

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Banmeet Signh's Dark Web Narcotics Trade

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Banmeet Signh's Dark Web Narcotics Trade

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The dark web, more so the onion routing system used in the dark web, was first developed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory. Soon enough, the Navy was forced to make the anonymous routing system accessible to everyone, introducing The Onion Router to everybody, well-intended or not.

Due to the extensive encryption and the effort it takes to access such areas of the dark web, it has become a hub for many crimes, such as money laundering, human trafficking, and narcotics trading.

Between the years of 2012 and 2017, Singh was active on multiple dark web marketing sites, including Silk Road, Alpha Bay and more, to sell illicit substances such as fentanyl and ketamine.

In 2019, Banmeet Singh was arrested for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison and was ordered to forfeit $150 million dollars.

There's no reportive motive for Singh's offending, however, a common motivation is money gained from selling narcotics.

A common criminological theory linked to online cryptocurrency drug markets is subcultural theory. Ken Gelder defined those within a subculture to be "in some way represented as non-normative or marginal through their particular interests and practices, through what they are, what they do and where they do it". Subcultural theory has been applied to deviance for many years, especially cybercrime and online cryptomarkets. People may learn from friends how to access the dark web and then make friends on the websites based on their shared interests, or exchanging dark web tools to infiltrate other devices and tools that help avoid detection by authorities.

This can be connected to the case of Banmeet Singh. Due to his place in the online drug cryptomarket subculture, he had managed to run an entire organisation with multiple co-conspirators for roughly five years. Without this subculture, he would have been a lone wolf, less successful in his organisation, and it could be argued that he may have been arrested earlier without the subculture being so adept at detection avoidance.

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission submitted an inquiry about the online illicit drug trade, which also spoke on some of the responses the Australian government has made about the issue.

One main response has been to have law enforcement work with Australia Post and other parcel posting companies to intervene when illicit drugs are purchased overseas and shipped into our borders. It may be argued that if the countries that banmeet singh shipped illicit drugs to had the same level of security in their mailrooms, perhaps his organisation would have collapsed before it barely got started.

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The eSafety Commissioner defined the act of doxxing to be "the intentional online exposure of an individual's identity, private information or personal details without their consent with the intent to cause harm"

Many people may only know doxxing as revealing someone's place of residence; however, there are many other forms, for example, revealing someone's identity who previously was anonymous is also considered doxxing.

Doxxing is considered cyber-dependent because in its definition, the exposure of someone's personal information happens through publication on the internet.

Some may also view the act of doxxing someone to be an example of digital drift. Goldsmith & Brewer discussed the concept of digital drift to more describe criminal offences. However, digital drift can also be applied to a kind person offline who cyberbullies people online.

As mentioned, this can be applied to doxxing, because many people wouldn't maliciously expose someone's private information, such as their address, in a room full of random strangers. However, in the digital space, it seems to be more likely for someone to find it okay to post someone's information to people they don't know with the intent to hurt that person.

Famous people and online figures tend to be at risk of being doxxed by haters and fans alike, however, it's less common to see a feud between two online figures result in one of them being doxxed.

Jack Douglass - aka Jacksfilms - was doxxed by a fellow creator in 2023 when the creator, Alia Shelesh - aka SSSniperwolf - posted an image of her location and mentioned that she was five minutes away from Jack's house, thereby releasing an approximate area of his residence to her 5.6 million Instagram followers at the time this took place.

The story continues to darken when Alia then posted a photo directly outside of Jack's house and the vague threat "let's talk like adults"

Jack was live-streaming at the time Alia had posted that, with his friends telling him to call the cops, and you can clearly see how shocked and distraught he was in that terrifying moment.

Jack had posted a YouTube video in response to this ordeal the next day, stating that "we feel violated, we no longer feel safe in our own home".

In response, YouTube had imposed a monetisation suspension on Alia, meaning she would not receive funds from her YouTube videos for a period of time as a sanction for doxxing Jack.

Many people believe that the punishment was not enough, especially since in America, the Interstate Doxxing Act states that the sanction for doxxing someone is a fine or even up to five years imprisonment.

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Sssniperwolf came to our home last night. It's time for YouTube to step in.

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The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner describes identity fraud to involve the use of another individuals personal information typically in order to gain benefit.

Although the name may be deceiving, online identity theft is considered cyber-enabled, not cyber-dependent.

INTERPOL described cyber-enabled crime as traditional crimes that can utilise traditional tools for committing such crimes.

Due to the previous history of identity theft, which can be committed without the use of technology, such as digging through rubbish in order to find documents with personal details on them, the use of technology only enhances the capabilities of stealing someone's information for personal gain.

A famous case of online identity theft is from the early 2000s, committed by a man called Abraham Abdallah. Abdallah used the internet to access confidential information of celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, among many others. He used this information to steal their money, some of these transaction requests being in the tens of millions.

Not only did Abdallah steal the money of the rich and famous, but he was also found to have obtained information such as birthdays, social security numbers and personal addresses of these victims.

Abraham explained to the judge during his criminal trial that he "wishes it was for the money" so he would have an excuse for his wrongdoing, however, instead he described how he had the compulsion to do it and "if anyone on this earth wants this to stop, i do"

Perhaps if Abraham had been raised with more awareness or psychological help in dealing with these compulsions that were connected with his obsessive compulsive disorder, he might not have stolen those identities or the money. This can be connected to social control theory, which posits that people need to be socialised out of crime and without proper socialisation, one may be at higher risk of falling into deviance. It can be argued that the lack of intervention for his compulsions falls under an absence of socialisation into what is right and wrong. Furthermore, perhaps negative socialisation as a child may have resulted in his development of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

On the other hand, mental illness and disorder can become present without a clear reason for their presentation. It is mutually possible that he had developed OCD later in life and was unsure how to seek help for it.

Abraham pleaded guilty in 2002, and while it's not easily found how many years in prison he was sentenced to, during the trial he was facing in between 11 and 288 years imprisonment for the 12 charges, but he was told by the judge he was more likely to receive the lesser sentence.

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The term 'Deepfake' was first coined by a social media user in 2017, and it describes the manipulation of media to synthesise a chosen person's face onto another photo or video.

Image-based abuse, particularly in the case of deepfake pornography, is a cyber-dependent crime. Typically for cyber-dependent crime, the means and opportunity for a cyber-dependent crime include technological knowledge and tools. This is applied here since without the advanced artificial intelligence that is only accessed through the use of technology, unconsensual deepfake media would not exist.

When it was first created, pornographic deepfake material spread like wildfire, with 104,800 pornographic deepfake images being created within only the first six months of its original creation.

The fast spreading popularity of deepfake pron can be connected to Routine Activity Theory, developed by Cohen & Felson. Routine Activity Theory posits that crimes happen when the three elements: a Motivated offender, a Suitable target and an absence of guardian are present.

One particularly harmful use of deepfake technology is deepfake pornography, which, if distributed, could impact someone's occupation, reputation and interpersonal relationships.

Conventionally attractive female celebrities are common victims of this digital harm, with deepfake pornography used for extortion or simply for people to indulge in parasocial relationships.

Two victims of this crime in particular are actresses Kristen Bell and Scarlett Johansson, in which the harmful falsified media was labelled as 'leaked' and gained over one and a half million views. In the YouTube video linked above, Kristen Bell describes her reaction to finding out her face was used in deepfake pornography. She said in the interview, "This is my face, it belongs to me".

What is worse is that the person who created and published the deepfake of Kristen Bell was never found and therefore never punished. Furthermore, while laws surrounding the manufacturing and publishing of deepfake image-based abuse have been created, they're extremely recent, so all the previous victims have been swept under the rug.

The deepfake of Kristen Bell was found in 2020, however, the Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act - aka the TAKE IT DOWN Act is the American legislation against deepfake technology and was only introduced to the Senate in January 2025.

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The most urgent threat of deepfakes isn't politics