Since this crime involves an online market allowing purchases of illicit goods through cryptocurrency, it is classified as a cyber-enabled crime which is a traditional crime that has been influenced and advanced by technology. The impacts Silk Road left can be identified when viewing federal law enforcements and the rapid rise in advancements relating to cybersecurity and other crypto crimes, while also effectively discouraging individuals from engaging with certain subcultures that participate in illegal online behaviours.

The accelerated discourse in the media led an activist and communications director from North Carolina, Logan Smith, to expose the rally attendees online. This action has been given the name 'doxing'. Smith ran a successful account on Twitter by the name of @YesYoureRacist, that aimed to name and shame those who attended the Charlottesville rally. The term comes from 'dropping dox/ documents' and when a person is doxxed, it is the equivalence of having their personal information released to the public without their knowledge or consent. Due to the widespread attention that the account had received from the public, he gained 300,00 new followers in the first week and within just under 4 days of creating the posts, two men had already been publicly identified and fired from their jobs.

As a result of this, to prevent similar consequences individuals who support extreme far-right political beliefs and promoted ideologies involving white supremacy online began to conceal their identities out of fear. Some went to such lengths including using VPN services and in some cases, underwent pseudonyms in an attempt to avoid being doxxed. With that in mind, a large percentage of those who attended the rally were expecting and familiar with the possible consequences that came along with participating.

Due to the great power that technology has in more recent times, the man behind the doxing did make it clear that he was aware of possible risks involved with his actions. One of these dangers is the misidentification of a person which is more than likely to result in large lawsuits. While part of the media had initially viewed Smith’s form of digital activism as inspiring, other sides of the conversation realised that this is a dark concept despite the motivation behind it. Some had even taken their distaste for Smith’s heroic doing as far as sending him and his family members death threats, though he continued to stand by his cause.

Crimes using artificial intelligence to create social engineering scams and those similar are often explained by the Routine Activity Theory, this can be used to explain crime from the offender's point of view through 3 elements that form an opportunity for a crime to be made.  The first element is the idea that the offender is motivated to commit the crime and is capable of doing so when the chance is available to them. The second element requires a setting for a suitable target of the crime, this can be anywhere as long as the subject can be reached. Lastly, the absence of a guardian who can intervene. For a crime like this to have taken place it means the offender had targeted their victim by gaining their trust, in this case, the offender had posed as someone the victim trusted. 

As machine learning frequently appears in the digital world, many countries have worked to combat the potential risks that stem from the issues surrounding new technology advancements. Within the European Union, large tech names like Google and Meta Platforms have agreed to strengthen policies regarding fake accounts and users involving deep fakes. As for the USA and Eastern Asia, laws that involve criminal penalties for deep fakes of nonconsensual pornography and political influence purposes have been placed.

Due to the entire investigation taking 2 years to uncover, Yahoo and its users were put at great risk as their data was leaked and under attack across the dark web. The Yahoo database contained users login details and phone numbers, as well as the individual hash values of digital combinations that translate to unique account codes.

Digital crimes such as hacking are commonly motivated and introduced to the offenders through Bandura’s popularised ‘Social Learning theory’. This theory studies the correlation between a criminal and their associates, and more specifically, how the social groups and settings a person surrounds themselves with has the ability to influence and educate an individual to behave in a similar way whether that be in a positive or negative light. 

Due to the mass prevalence of technology, law enforcement across the United States of America has added new laws surrounding image-based abuse. Since 2017, there have been 38/50 states that have created revenge porn laws. Such crimes can be prevented from being posted online by strengthening guidelines and internet safety standards across tech platforms.