NCRM Placement Fellowship: Identity Management – Learning from Cybercriminals

Placement organisation: Alan Turing Institute
Researcher: Jonathan Lusthaus, University of Oxford
Placement duration: January 2018 - June 2018

In collaboration with the GO Science and the Alan Turing Institute, this NCRM Placement Fellowship reviews the impact of identity inference on aspects such as privacy, anonymity, pseudonymity and identification via weak indicators. Dr Jonathan Lusthaus, from the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford, is carrying out the project. His approach is focussed on a case study of what can be learned from cybercriminals in their approach to identity management. By virtue of their purported anonymity and illicit activities, cybercriminals can be extremely cautious actors who strictly guard their identities. They regularly take measures, beyond the average user, to hide their true selves from law enforcement and others.

By better understanding how cybercriminals seek to protect their identities, some lessons may be learned for better managing the exposure of digital identity for legitimate users. Methodologically, this project also seeks to develop ways of successfully combining qualitative research with data science.