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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nDoxxing, which stands for \u201cdocs\u201d (sometimes spelled \u201cdoxing”), is a type of cybercrime that involves a person’s information being released online without their consent<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike other cybercrimes, which are committed to get financial gains, doxxing is typically committed<\/a> for the purpose of <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes people use doxing just for fun or to get sadistic pleasure from harming others! <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we mentioned earlier, in doxxing, someone leaks your sensitive information online without your knowledge or consent for taking personal revenge on you, harassing, or proving their point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First of all, the doxer (the person that deploys doxxing, also spelled as “doxxer”) gathers your information by<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, sometimes the doxxer doesn\u2019t need to hunt for your information online. In cases of personal revenge, the doxer might be someone you personally know, like a friend, colleague, neighbor, etc., who already knows your phone number, home address, email address, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, the doxxers decide which information they want to reveal, on which platform, and the method of revelation. They generally leak your personal information such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doxxing can permanently tarnish the victim\u2019s reputation, cause employment loss or embarrassment in front of friends and family members<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The victims will be vulnerable to various cyber-attacks once their financial details or PII are available online<\/strong>, even after the platform used for doxing removes such information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As you\u2019ll read later, the consequences of doxing can not only be harmful to victims, but it can also be lethal<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To further understand and answer your question about \u201cwhat doxxing?\u201d\nand the motives behind this type of cybercrime, let\u2019s explore some real-world\nexamples: <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s\nnot uncommon for journalists to find out a celebrity\u2019s personal life\ninformation and to publish such gossip on their media platforms. However, doxxing\nisn\u2019t your regular entertainment news. Here, the hacker publishes the\ncelebrity\u2019s sensitive information such as their payment card info, email\naddress, social security number or phone numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Celebrities\nlike Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and President Donald\nTrump \u2014 as well as many others \u2014 have been victims of doxxing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Example<\/strong>: In 2013, TMZ, reported<\/a> that a group of Russian hackers doxed 12 high-profile celebrities and politicians by releasing their SSNs, mortgage amounts, credit card info, car loans, banking and other information on a website. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, doxxing is done by\ninternet vigilantes who can\u2019t be bothered to properly research or investigate\ntheir victims to ensure they have the right person. Instead, they wrongly link\npeople to activities or situations that are unrelated to them. Due to such \u201cfaulty\u201d\ndoxing, hence the name, innocent people face: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s better understand faulty\ndoxing with the following real-life examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example 1<\/strong>: In August 2017, a march was held by neo-Nazi white nationalists on the campus of the University of Virginia. Someone on social media incorrectly identified<\/a> one of the participants as Kyle Quinn, a professor running an engineering laboratory in Arkansas. Throughout the night, thousands of people shared his image \u2014 and even his address \u2014 on social media. They also sent him hate messages and demanded his resignation from his job at the university. Later, it was discovered that Quinn has nothing to do with the Virginia rally, and that he was just a victim of such faulty doxxing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example 2<\/strong>: In 2013, some vigilantes on Reddit<\/a> misidentified an innocent student, Sunil Tripathi, as a suspect of the Boston Marathon bombing<\/a>. Tripathi went missing and, according to his family\u2019s social media page<\/a>, his body was found in the water near a park in Rhode Island. His cause of death was ruled a suicide, which was believed to be the result of public shaming caused by faulty doxxing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, people use doxing as a means of taking revenge<\/a>. They publish their enemy’s some publicly identifying information online to cause them shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example: <\/strong>In March 2015, Curt Schilling, a former Major League Baseball player, took revenge against the people who posted sexually offensive comments about his daughter on Twitter. Schilling investigated the real faces behind the troll Twitter profiles and doxxed them by posting<\/a> their real identities online. As a result, one bully got fired from his job<\/a>, and another was suspended from his community college. Other bullies, whose identities were not published, got scared from this doxing, and posted apologizing messages. In this case, Schilling used doxing for online vigilante justice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another method of doxing is known as \u201cswatting<\/a>.\u201d This occurs when a person wrongly accuses someone of a crime and sends police (or a SWAT team, hence \u201cswatting\u201d) to the victim’s address to cause them harassment. However, often such doxxing can prove fatal for the victim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Example: In December 2017, while playing an online video game, Tyler Barriss was involved in a conflict between two other gamers, Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill. According to NBC News<\/a>, Viner asked Barriss to swat Gaskill, and Gaskill challenged him to do it, providing his previous home address \u2014 one that was now occupied by the family of a man named Andrew Finch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Barriss doxxed Gaskill by making a prank call to police. Pretending\nto be him, Barriss told the police he\u2019d killed his father and was holding the\nrest of his family hostage. Finch was killed by one of the responding police\nofficers after being called outside. Barriss has since been sentenced to 20\nyears in prison for the phony call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the swatting is done for fun, there are some people that\nuse doxxing to execute serious crimes like murder. They reveal their enemies\u2019\npersonal information online and provoke others to harm them. The motive can be\npersonal revenge or showing disagreement or hatred towards any specific cause,\nreligion, activity or race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Example:<\/strong> In the late 90s and early 2000s, anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley collected names, pictures, and home addresses of abortion providers and published them on a website called the Nuremberg Files<\/a>. He labeled that list as a “hit list.” Eight doctors from the Nuremberg’s listings have been killed so far. The website celebrated the death of such murders and encouraged pro-life activists to continue killing other doctors from the hit list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As you can see, no one is immune to\na doxxing attack. Whether it’s an ordinary person like you and me or a big\ncelebrity, we\u2019re all at risk. This is why we have to take steps to protect\nourselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the time, attackers\nresearch on the internet to gain sensitive information about their victim. So,\nthe best way to prevent doxxing is to limit what you share online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a few tips to help individuals protect their\npersonal information while using the internet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n How to Install a WebRTC Extension or Add-on\nin Mozilla Firefox<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n How to Install\na WebRTC Extension or Add-on in Google Chrome<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Use the internet with wisdom:<\/strong> Don’t use the internet and anonymity as a means to bully, offend, or spread hate. You have all the right to hold your beliefs and opinions on different subjects. But if possible, don\u2019t indulge yourself in unnecessary arguments on sensitive topics such as religion, gender, politics, or race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you post something controversial online, it can spread on the internet like a wildfire. You might think it’s just a tweet or “funny comment,” and just minutes later, you may see thousands of people getting offended by the same message. Such incidents motivate people to execute doxxing against you to take revenge or “win the argument.” Thus, one of the best ways to protect yourself from doxxing is not to provoke someone and to protect your information as much as possible. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a few tips for individuals who own websites and want\nto protect their and their users\u2019 personal information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you have the right to protect yourself against doxxing<\/a>? Absolutely, depending on where you live! The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation<\/a> (GDPR) can help you limit what personal information companies have about you, and the U.S. federal laws against stalking (18 U.S. Code \u00a7 2261A<\/a>) and protections against making restricted personal information public (18 U.S. Code \u00a7 119<\/a>) are useful in helping you fight back against doxxers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Each state has\nits own laws for citizens\u2019 security, in which doxxing might be categorized\nunder cyber stalking, harassment or threats. You can also file complaint for\nextortion if doxxer is threating you to leak your sensitive information if\nmoney is not paid. You can also file a civil suit against doxxer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, it will take a lengthy legal battle, probably long enough to spread your information to a large population and cause the damage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though there are a handful of steps you can take to\nhide your private information online, you\u2019re still vulnerable to doxxing\nattacks through one major source: data breaches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your information is stored on the third-party platforms like\ngovernment agencies, universities, health-care organizations, or ecommerce site\nwhere you engage in transactions. Unfortunately, not all of these platforms are\nserious about protecting your personal data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are numerous examples, such as the Capital One breach<\/a>, Honda breach<\/a>, First American Financial Corporation breach<\/a> and many other incidents where customers\u2019 sensitive information got leaked by organizations. Even the government organizations play carelessly while protecting their citizen’s information. Notable examples of such data breaches disclosed the personal information of<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, at the end of the day, if a doxer is tech-savvy, they\ncan get your information from such data leaks or even by buying it on the dark\nweb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we have learned that even though there are many things you can try to hide your personal information online, you\u2019re still vulnerable to doxxing. For doxxing, sometimes, prevention is better than cure. Not provoking someone online and stay away from controversial discussions might be the best doxxing prevention tip. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doxxing is a cyber threat without boundaries \u2014 anyone can be a victim of doxxing regardless of their age, race, nationality, gender, or religion The internet is a double-edged sword:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[40,50,51],"class_list":["post-790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cyber-security","tag-cyber-attacks","tag-doxxing","tag-identity","post-with-tags"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Does it Mean to Get Doxxed?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
5 Examples of Doxxing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Celebrity Doxxing <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Faulty Doxxing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. Revenge Doxxing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Swatting Doxxing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5. Crime Doxxing <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How to Prevent Doxxing <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How to Prevent Doxxing: A User\u2019s Guide<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How to Prevent Doxxing: Website Owner\u2019s Guide<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Legal Protections Against Doxxing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Vulnerability in Doxxing <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data Breaches <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A Final Word<\/h2>\n\n\n\n