Gender disparity in the experience of being hacked: A focus on the third-level digital divide using Twitter data

Abstract

Hacking is an opening gate to cybercrimes by first gaining unauthorized access online. Millions of hacked accounts are traded underground and misused to steal money and spam malicious hyperlinks. A majority of previous studies on hacking have been conducted in engineering disciplines especially on the detection of hacked accounts, while relatively little has been known about the experience of being hacked from sociocultural perspectives. This study aimed to examine the experience of being hacked and gender differences in the experience using Twitter data. Tweets in which users mentioned their accounts were hacked in the United States from January 2018 to December 2021 were obtained (N=13,731 tweets). Topic modeling was applied on the data using machine learning techniques. Gender classification was also performed on user profiles. The results uncovered three main themes on the experience of being hacked: (a) types of services that hacked users used

(b) negative impacts experienced by users

and (c) coping strategies of users. A statistical analysis on 8,191 tweets by men and 5,261 tweets by women showed that women were more likely to report an experience of being hacked in all types of services except gaming. Women were more likely to experience in reputational harm, money loss and affected use experience. Furthermore, gender differences were found in coping strategies. Men were more likely to perform active strategies like warning others not to click on fraudulent links, rebuilding and deducing hackers’ origins. Meanwhile, women were more likely to seek help from others and ask others to report the hacked accounts. The findings of this study provide evidence of a third-level digital divide by showing a gender gap in offline outcomes while experiencing online incident of being hacked. Several explanations were discussed on how this divide can be related to socially constructed attributes.