Cybersecurity in Electronic Commerce: Effect of Safeguarding Personal Data on Identity Theft

Cybersecurity plays important roles in electronic commerce (e-commerce). The President of the United States declared that the U.S. economic prosperity in 21st century depends on cybersecurity. In the face of severe exigencies of threat, several nations and organizations are addressing the issue independently as well as jointly. In this dissertation I examine the effect of exercising certain information security practices among e-commerce subscribers on identity theft. I conducted a cross-sectional survey of 623 adult respondents from 12 purposively selected groups. The analysis of data from 572 eligible respondents found that 14% of the respondents had been victims of identity theft. Relatively more victims (20%) were in the older age group (55 years and older) than in the younger age group (13% are 21 to 29 years old). Also, male respondents experienced 70% more identity theft than the females; 17% male vs. 10%female. Among all the risk factors studied, social engineering and phishing/Nigerian scams were the major methods of identity theft. Although 94% of the young respondents (80% overall) watch movies online, watching movies online did not increase their risk of identity theft. Similarly, the study found no adverse effect on identity theft related to respondents' accessing adult sites online. Almost none of the identity theft victims register the incident with the Identity Theft Clearing House and 66% of the victims did not even report it to the local police. Clearly, we need more awareness for and training on cybersecurity and identity theft. This dissertation also provides recommendations on how to safeguard personal data from cyber criminals and what victims should do once identity theft happens to them.