Doxing poses real dangers to online victims.

By Abigail Clarke: Contributing Content Blogger

A mere days ago I heard about a doxing incident. It wasn't named for what it was in the press of course! You would have to live in a bog to have missed the news. The story involved a situation where a woman claimed to have been gang raped. She took her story to Rolling Stone magazine who decided to publish it. The doxing came about when a blogger dug into the woman’s past finding her real name and other personal information which he used to threaten and intimidate her with. To justify his illegal degree of privacy invasion he claimed to be a vigilante of the truth and told her that he would post her personal information unless she admitted the story was false. He posted the information about her anyway.

Doxing is the activity of obtaining publicly listed or private information about a person to then use as a leverage of threat against them. Yes it was proven that the Rolling Stone story was indeed false, the larger point I want to make is the way which it was exposed. The privacy invasion, pressuring or intimidation of anyone, regardless of their alleged offense, should never be executed in the manner it was in this circumstance. This is cyber harassment in disguise and the blogger a cyber bullying criminal.

I was always taught that two wrongs don’t make a right!  What this blogger achieved was not a win for some kind of good. It was a strong message condoning the practice of ransoming a person’s private information and intimidating them. Using the internet to muscle people about or violate their privacy for your own means or gains, even under some alleged cause, is not an act of integrity or one any of us should applaud. Doxing is a crime and crimes should be punished!

Do you know what doxing is?

By Abigail Clarke: Contributing Content Blogger

Here's a fright nobody much speaks about. There is a disturbing aspect of cyber harassment called Doxing. Doxing is the researching and publishing of personally identifiable information about an individual to create a public perception about them. This can be accomplished by searching public databases and social media websites to locate pieces of information. The information may initially be fragmented and so the doxer goes about collecting and piecing together the picture they want to create about a victim. Some internet harassers thrive on this as they are able to strengthen their control over a victim by swaying the opinion of others. This is just another way of social engineering where large groups of people are influenced by information framed in such a way as to give an overwhelming perception of an individual. The information may be factual but intentionally presented out of context to project the image they are going for, which is usually to make their target look as bad as possible. The threat of something like this, well it's just about enough when understood to make anyone want to live under a rock!

Doxing is difficult to combat because it is technically not illegal.  Cyber harassers are merely dispensing public information. This type of harassment can be especially harmful to an individual not only because it takes a toll on their mental well-being through potential intense embarrassment, but their reputation can be irreparably damaged. If the individual holds a public position or has a career that depends on public perception, doxing could literally end their livelihood despite additional information presented exonerating the victim. In other words, once the damage is done it is difficult if not impossible for a targeted individual to recover.