Technical reports

A ten-year review of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre

Hannah Pankow, Alice Hutchings, Richard Clayton

November 2025, 68 pages

Abstract

This report presents a comprehensive ten-year review of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre (CCC), evaluating its impact on the academic research landscape. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we combine a scoping review of 203 publications with a survey of 44 dataset users and 10 in-depth interview sessions with 12 individuals, including the Centre’s leadership. The findings reveal a consistent and accelerating uptake of the Centre’s datasets, with 131 of the reviewed papers making explicit use of the data. This growth is driven by a broad, international, and interdisciplinary community. We find the Centre’s primary contribution is the enablement of new research, particularly for postgraduate students and early-career researchers who gain access to large-scale data that would otherwise be infeasible to collect. While technical setup difficulties present a barrier for some users, the development of the PostCog analysis tool has been a critical success, serving as both an accessibility and efficiency tool for the community. However, its impact is currently limited by an awareness gap. We conclude that the Centre’s success lies in its evolution from a data provider to a holistic research ecosystem. Its future relevance will depend on its ability to adapt its data collection to evolving online harms and to ensure the long-term viability of its critical infrastructure.

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BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-1003,
  author =	 {Pankow, Hannah and Hutchings, Alice and Clayton, Richard},
  title = 	 {{A ten-year review of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre}},
  year = 	 2025,
  month = 	 nov,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-1003.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-1003},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-1003}
}