How does cyber technology impact interactions between offenders and victims? 

There are many ways cyber technology impacts interactions between offenders and victims. The most important is that due to cybercrime being on a device, of course, offenders and victims don’t realistically meet “face to face”. According to Marleen Kranenbarg, “In the case of cybercrime, there is a lot of victim-offender crossovers, and factors like limited self-control and habitual activities help to explain some of the disparities in victimization, offending, and victimization-offending.” This means that there of course is always a crossover between a victim and their offender. It just happens in different ways. For example, social media. We are always meeting different people on all sorts of different social media platforms, but do we truly know who they are? No. Someone I know met someone online and they ended up catfishing her, for about 4 months and then continued to stalk her after she found out who they really were. It is truly scary to think about who’s behind half of the profile we come across because we don’t know who is real and who is not. Which plays a role in the offender and victim dynamic. Offenders are often very smart no how they reach their victim and their actions around them, they manipulate them into thinking they can trust you which does end up happening. Face-to-face interaction does not need to happen for someone to be considered a victim. There are many victims that are victims of cybercrime relates crimes including cyberbullying, harassment, verbal assault, etc. Cyber security needs to be strengthened in order to educate the population about what to look for in order to prevent becoming a victim of any type of cybercrime. Cybercrime will continue to proliferate as time goes on, and while they are not as severe or frightening as face-to-face crimes, they can make people feel as if their sense of privacy has been violated.