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The purpose of this paper is to undertake an exploratory study on mapping the investment fraud methods and tactics used by scammers against the emerging literature on scam compliance.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with victims of investment fraud supported by the engagement of specialist counsellors and allied health professionals who specialise in scam victim support (including investment fraud).

Investment fraud offending in the cases sampled exhibited a number of dominant offending traits and methodological themes. These included a strong reliance or dependency on legitimate service provisioning on the part of the fraudster and the use of key trust measures to lure the victim. The empirical data revealed the presence of a number of scam compliance influences captured in the literature, including trust, social influence and urgency, as well as others not previously documented that pave the way for further research attention.

The research only examined a sample of investment fraud victim experiences that engaged a national victim support service immediately following detection over a 24 month period.

The research found that offending relied upon the participation of trust-building signals and measures. Legitimate economy participants appear to play a dominant role in enabling investment scam activities, further creating efficiencies for criminals. The offending tended to follow a number of distinct but connected phases. Impacts were influenced by specific offending attributes, such as whether remote access was given to offenders of a victim’s device, as well as the nature of the identity credentials access.

The research has practically applied an emerging view of scam compliance influences and vulnerabilities within an investment fraud context. The study is novel in its thematic analysis of the distinct phases and tactics used by scammers.

This paper aims to assert that knowledge of organisational weaknesses, vulnerabilities and compromise points (here termed “dark knowledge”), is just as critical to organisational integrity and hence, must also be managed in a conventional knowledge management sense. However, such dark knowledge is typically difficult to identify and accordingly, few studies have attempted to conceptualise this view.

Using a background of fraud diamond theory, the authors examine this dark knowledge using a case study analysis of fraud at a large Asia-Pacific telecommunications provider. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with the firm’s fraud unit.

The authors identify six components of dark knowledge, being artefactual knowledge, consequential knowledge, knowledge of opportunity, knowledge of experimentality, knowledge of identity and action and knowledge of alternativity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to identify a knowledge type based on organisational compromises and vulnerabilities. The paper shows that accounts of organisational weakness can yet provide knowledge insights.

It is becoming easier for end-users to modify their information system, sometimes against the wishes of management or the original manufacturer. In the mobile device context, “modding”, “jailbreaking” or “rooting” allows a mobile phone user to select operating software and network providers other than those mandated by the original provider. Prior studies have theorised that modders and non-modders possess different perspectives on the relationship between them and their device provider. However, these differences have not been empirically demonstrated in prior work. This paper aims to test theoretical pathways to explain the behavioural relationship effects of security within the modding context.

This study models four relationship conceptualisations from prior research. The study tests this model using a survey of 464 mobile device users to compare the user attitudes of modders and non-modders.

Modder and non-modder relationships differ. Both groups value security, but in different ways: modder relationships are governed by satisfaction and commitment, while non-modder relationships are governed more by trust.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically demonstrate the relationship differences between IS modifiers and non-modifiers. Most published work has focused on IS that are unmodified. Incorporating device modification may improve behavioural understanding of end-users.

Service separation distress arises when service consumers worry that a useful service may become unavailable. This paper aims to integrate two theoretical explanations of ongoing service use, being service continuance and relationship commitment and a common foundation of cognitive social capital.

This study conducts an online survey of 245 cloud service consumers, which we use to test our research model.

This paper finds that relationship commitment mediates the service continuance explanation in explaining service separation distress.

While service features are important, they are less important than the consumer’s perceived relationship with the service in promoting perceived service separation distress. Contrary to expectations, the finding identified the service relationship as the dominant explanation for service separation distress.

Jeopardy to the consumer-provider relationship can create greater anxiety and distress to consumers than a disruption that threatens service features alone. Adding service features may not reduce customer separation distress regarding the service.

The unified cognitive social capital lens on service separation suggests that consumers value service provider relationships (e.g. commitment and trust) over service features. A stronger social relationship with the consumer, in turn, strengthens the perceived service offering.

This is among the first studies to unify two explanations of service continuance using social capital and to empirically identify how this explanation affects service distress.

Software piracy is an ongoing problem for software producers. At the same time, mobile devices such as personal digital assistants and smart phones are increasing in popularity. This paper seeks to examine the supply of pirate software for mobile devices, against a backdrop of conventional desktop piracy theory.

Using a novel data set of pirate software releases, the paper reviews 18,000 entries from a pirate software database to examine the type and origin of this software.

The paper finds that more popular platforms are not necessarily subject to greater levels of software piracy. For mobile devices, productivity software was more popular than game software. Many piracy groups were involved, but only four groups were responsible for over half of all releases. Some popular devices, such as the Blackberry and Apple iPhone, showed little to no piracy levels.

As with empirical research into any criminal or deviant behaviour, there may be intention to deceive. The findings regarding device popularity and availability of pirate software have implications for demand‐side research.

The findings provide insights for business managers and information security professionals in the telecommunications and mobile applications industries.

Prior research work has focused on software for desktop computers. This study contributes by being some of the first published work on piracy for mobile devices. The work is also original in that most prior research has focused on the demand for pirate software. This paper provides insight into the supply of this software.

Digital piracy continues to be a problem for firms, industry lobby groups and regulators. The purpose of this paper is to report initial findings of a review of the digital piracy literature. To reduce conceptual overlap and duplicated effort, the author aims to identify gaps in understanding for future research.

The paper reviews prior literature on digital piracy across disciplinary areas.

Six gaps are identified, being the supply of pirate digital materials, piracy for non‐desktop environments, alternative distribution methods, the quality of pirate materials, the behaviour of piracy groups, and the benefits of digital piracy. These gaps constitute important undiscovered areas of knowledge.

The paper excludes working papers and practitioner articles, which may contain different insight. The paper reports initial findings only, and the ongoing analysis may shed new light on these findings.

The paper contributes by providing a multidisciplinary view of gaps in the literature. No prior study has yet reviewed prior literature with a view to identifying these opportunities for future work.

This study aims to explore whether collectivistic and individualistic users exhibit different e‐commerce loyalty and purchase intentions.

The paper operationalises Triandis' individuality and collectivism typology. Empirical data were gathered using face‐to‐face questionnaire instruments with 140 respondents, comprising undergraduate students and government employees.

Online shoppers are more individualistic than those who have not shopped online, while individualism and collectivism do not influence online loyalty.

As firms compete for online custom, it would be useful to gain some understanding of the possible effects of individual and collective behaviour on purchasing behaviour.

Instead of competing for existing online users, online stores could expand their market by appealing to offline shoppers using collective techniques.

Online loyalty has been an important focus of prior work and, while there has been significant focus on communities, Internet use remains a very personal activity. The paper provides new evidence that offline shoppers are more collectivistic than online shoppers.

This paper aims to present the findings of a study examining fraud in the workplace setting, principally in the Australasian context. Although prior research into occupational fraud is conceptually rich, there is a lack of empirical evidence of this important but elusive problem.

Based on investigative data from 14 participating firms, the paper provides insights into the gender breakdowns and stated motivations of offenders. The paper also provides evidence of the number of investigations, interviews and reports to law enforcement in these firms.

The study finds that genders are evenly balanced for most firms, with females significantly outnumbering males in banking firms. Self-imposed financial hardship was the most popular motivator. Of the number of admissions to wrongdoing, only half were subsequently reported to law enforcement.

Particularly complex or advanced types of occupational fraud may go unreported or undetected: as a result, the figures presented in this study may be incomplete. Reported figures are based largely on historical data provided by respondents, and the authors are unable to report accurate details of the respondent firms. This makes it difficult to determine the frequency of offending against the background population.

Investigators should continue to look for changes in the life circumstances of their staff. Such changes will give an indication of instances of staff living beyond their means and the sudden financial pressures that can compel occupational fraud. Instead of trying to supervise staff to an impractical degree, managers and proprietors would be well advised to be alert to the kind of pressures that their staff might experience.

Social control and detection measures are likely to be easier to implement and less invasive than technical controls. The study provides additional pressure to update traditional conceptualisations of the male white collar offender. While male offenders were responsible for larger losses per case, females were more numerous in the summary offence data.

Gaining insights into the problem of employee fraud and white collar crime is difficult. The authors’ contribution in this paper is to provide empirical insights into the makeup of white collar offenders, including insights on gender.