Even if you have heard of “doxing” (or doxxing) you may not be clear on exactly what it means. Wikipedia defines doxing as “the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifiable information (especially personally identifiable information) about an individual or organization.” The term derives from “document tracing” which means gathering documents on a particular person or organization to learn more about them. That information may be publicly released in order to harass or humiliate the target, or to allow others to do so.
Anyone can become a victim of doxing.
Doxing may be done as a form of bullying or the doxers may see themselves as vigilantes avenging a wrong. No matter what the motive, the consequences for the target can be much worse than a little embarrassment.
After the Charlottesville, VA marches, a college professor was incorrectly identified as a participant in a white nationalist rally. In fact, he was 1100 miles away at the time of the rally. That didn’t stop people from flooding his social media accounts with threats and calling for him to be fired. He and his wife left their home after the address was publicly disseminated on social media. After the Boston Marathon bombing, Reddit users and others on social media sought to identify those responsible, leading to the false identification of suspects.
According to Lifewire.com, anyone can become a victim of doxing, but there are steps consumers can take to protect their personally identifiable information (PII).
- Restrict how much personal information you share. Bits of information can be pieced together from multiple sources to form a larger picture.
- Do not share personally identifying information, such as your address, phone number, or other data. If you have already put that information online, take it down.
- Review privacy settings regularly. Facebook, Google and other websites store data on users. Make sure you know what data they are storing on you and set your privacy settings appropriately.
- Anonymize your domain registrations. If you own a domain name, choose privacy services to keep your registration information private.
- Review how many sites still have your information. Remember MySpace? You may never use it these days, but if you set up a profile more than a decade ago, it is still there.
Use more than one username. It is easy to gather information about you if you use the same identifier across multiple platforms. Instead, use one username for online forums, another for gaming, another for social media, etc.
