Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Do I Recover From Doxxing?
An anonymous reader writes: I've been doxxed on a popular forum, by one of the moderators no less. The forum owner doesn't care, the hosting company doesn't care. I'm getting bombarded by email and social media, even via GitHub. How does a person recover from this? I don't want to create a whole new identity or shut down all my web sites, social media etc. Can't really change my real name either, at least not without an incredible amount of hassle. The police don't care, and since the forum owner is on the other side of the world it's unlikely there could be any legal consequences, and even if they were they would probably only draw more attention to me. I've tried to clean up Google's search results about me. How do I fix this? What does a fix even look like?
The police don't care,
If you want to get the police to do anything in this world, don't contact them yourself, have your lawyer contact them.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Which forum exactly is this so we can avoid going to that trash heap?
You Don't everything you post and everything someone posts about you are here forever. I have a good friend who was impersonated by an internet troll, one of those LBGT activist types, what was said about here even though it is not true just won't go away. The technical term for this; like she you are Screwed. Life isn't fair.
... just imagine what it's like for actual famous people?
Start Here. Unfortunately there's really not much you can do if the webmaster doesn't care other than maybe try to go over their head somewhere in that chain.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
By simply asking to the forum owner, well, he may simply not be motivated.. A lot of people seem to use fake/automated/careless/troll DMCA complaints, and they do tend to actually work, even if when they are not legit, and with no subsequent consequences to the complainer afterwards... Maybe this can help you.
I'd hate to see what happens in America if guns were restricted because the fear of someone showing up on your door step with a weapon is the difference between a genuine doxxer epidemic and your typical interwebs asshats.
Doxxing, by definition, is the public release of private information. Op didn't release the info. Nefarious 3rd parties did.
Are you an asshole that's only complaining because he one upped you?
I understand you're trying to avoid further publicity, but you left the context of your crisis blank. Why are you a personality that's driving these people to bombard you? In the off chance this was retaliation for a negative action on your part, use this as a life lesson to behave better. Golden rule!
That's the only real solution. All of those people who are hassling you now, will be hassling somebody else in the future. I hope that the "popular forum" you mention isn't something that's vital to your life; if it isn't then abandon it. If it is, it's a more interesting question.
If you need to continue to participate in that forum, I would suggest you just be yourself. Say what you believe, and don't get too fussy about it.
I've heard from a lot of women who participate in public fora that this kind of abuse is not just commonplace, it's ubiquitous. You might also think of the 34,000,000 people doxxed last month. It's just a common thing, it's going to happen to everybody sooner or later.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Not sure how to attack this problem, but a couple ideas:
Like you said, you can't change your name, and you probably don't want to move. Said information is therefore static. If you fight it, you risk the Barbra Streisand effect. Raising a ruckus and loudly complaining will only draw more attention.
I think your best bet is to wait it out. The best way to become invisible is to be boring. Lay low, wait for the mob to some some new, more interesting person to bother.
You have to realise that once that information is out you will never be able to completely get rid of it.
It's all about damage control, and tedious link removal, possibly for years to come.
The best behaviour is ofcourse to make sure doxxing can't really harm you, ie don't post/do stupid things on the net that can be exposed.
Addresses, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, names, etc. are all part of doxxing but that's all public records
trying to live on the web, a "place" that does not really exist. The internet is a great thing for communication and to go looking for information, but there is really no reason for most people to have a "web presence" and people who do not (like 99.99% of all people in human history) do not end up with these sorts of totally artificial and unnecessary problems.
Your first question therefore should be: "why do I care?" followed shortly after by "what does it REALLY matter?"
People who actually know me know what I am like and no amount of online dirt about me would convince them otherwise. People who do not know me could be easily convinced to believe anything about me they might find online - but they do not matter to me; since I do not know them I do not care if they know me or if they imagine they know me. I do not know the internet reputations of any of the people I deal with in the real world, I do however care very much about their actual reputations in the real world and I know who I can trust on their word or a handshake.
This silly mental disorder of the Twitter generation that thinks that an online reputation or identity matters at all need to seriously contemplate what really matters in life and need to remember that NOBODY on Earth in all of human history even had an online reputation before about 20 years ago. In most places, the people you actually need to interact with in the real world care nothing about your internet identity/presence.
You and/or your social media friends have publicized information about yourself in the web. You can't get it back. Live with it. You're very naive to assume that you have any control over any of the content you've posted or anyone who reuses it. This is the nature of the internet. There is no global system that would give you any rights on this. Though I am curious what triggered this doxxing in the first place. As long as it stays online it is no different to any other bullying.
If the harrasment is beyond legal and the police wont help, your only chance is to find the individual and deal with him directly. So, find the person and go knock on his door. Make sure that you do not do anything beyond repair.
2012 article but it might help: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-delete-yourself-from-the-internet/
Doxing is releasing personally-identifiable information. Pretty much all of what is part of "doxing" can be bought from public records sites for like $15.
If you go to a user page on GitHub, you can report abuse and/or block users.
Even if they are using an alt account, reporting abuse is a good first step because if they create more alts, GitHub may eventually block those, and even the main account if they have one.
On email, mark the sender as spam, for the phone if you can just disable voice mail for a while and whitelist calls.
It's probably just a handful of idiots so if you ignore them and carry on eventually they will tire of getting nothing out of their efforts.
If the moderators of a forum are against you not much you can do except carry on and complain to the web site owners. But do be really sure about what you are complaining about and present evidence of what you are claiming they did.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a stupid word in any case. There is tons of publicly available information on people, just the municipal tax roll for starters, then the business registry.
No special leet skills required.
Mostly random stuff.
There is only prevention
Besides the obvious tip of not using the same password:
- Never use the same username
- Never register on any website using the same email address you use to receive bills and bank statements
- Never use 3rd party authentication (facebook, twitter, google+) to log in to other sites, much less multiple sites
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Maybe talk to Github, your e-mail provider (or the abuse address of each sender), and your social media host about all the harassers who are coming through those platforms? They can presumably ban people who use your contact info as a way to harass you, or at least lock down your account from random people messaging you.
As for your contact information being available, that's not really actionable, but directing people to harass you probably is. You should probably screenshot everything, and hire an actual lawyer, who can presumably help you file a civil (?) suit against a John/Jane Doe and try to subpoena the IP and actual info of the person or persons encouraging others to harass you.
More often than not, 'doxxing' is just compiling information that is already available on the internet. People think they've been 'hacked' or 'stalked' but they often forget that they posted the information in some forum/comment section using the same username they use everywhere. I once had a guy ask me to do it to him because he didn't believe that I could. He'd posted 6 times on the forum in question using that username. I was able to identify 2 or 3 other anonymous accounts he'd used on that forum, pictures of not only the exterior but the interior of his house, his real name/social media profile and all the troves of information that provides. It took me about an hour to tease out his data from a woman in Florida. Why? Because he'd mentioned his cats names in one of those 6 posts. That lady in Florida had the same names for her cats, otherwise it was the only thread I needed to pull to unravel exactly who this guy was.
Make an example of them. (Just to be clear: Legally! Do not harass them back.)
You're not going to be able to wipe stuff off the internet. You need to bury the bad with something good. Here's an article that might help about how the woman whose tasteless joke picture was taken out of context and blown out of proportion got her life back together.
Good luck and God bless.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
i hear people make money with it, you are just only a casual victim
go pro, just like the videocameras
Doxxing is a way to single out a person with the intent to cause them serious emotional, financial and or physical harm by inciting others to harassment or worse. Yes, most people's street addresses, phone numbers, etc. are easily found, but finding and publishing that information about a particular person to harm them is an aggressive and in most cases illegal act.
Never use an account of any sort that can be traced back to yourself. Never post a photo of yourself as it can be traced by the likes of Google images et al.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Your first mistake was being an asshole. How do I know? Because people, as a rule, are lazy. I'm lazy. You're lazy. We're all lazy. So why, I'm forced to ponder, are so many people intent on fucking with you that it overcomes their natural laziness?
The only answer that makes sense is that you were a raging asshole.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Just come out and say it - Reddit.
Not sure why anyone hasn't said this but get a one way ticket to Vietnam. Live like a king on the beach for a few years. Stay offline for the most part. Could be a fresh and exhilarating thing to do. Take up new hobbies and enjoy your life.
You won't get any logistical answers here because there isn't anything you can do to combat what has happened.
If you turned your computer off now, and never turned it on again, would you notice any ill-effects? If someone in my office was doxxed, would I even know? I someone told me "bob in accounts was doxxed" I'd go "oh?". And that's it. Is it the fear that someone's going to turn up at your house and kill you? What is the fear?
If it's only an online thing, then just changed your online presence. I create a new account on pretty much every site I use every year or so - or just stop using them - to help avoid stalkers, spys, people tracking my usage patterns etc. Just do that. You lose nothing except a few minutes a year and whatever reputation you've earned (in the rare case that there's any reputation system in place).
I seriously doubt random people are scanning the internet for people they don't know and have had no interaction with and who've been doxxed so they can then turn it into a real world problem of some sort; it's just spotty little bedroom boy virgins with internet access and nothing better to do.
you can find them at http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com/
they also have a guide on what you should do after you've been doxxed (http://crashoverridenetwork.tumblr.com/post/114270394687/so-youve-been-doxed-a-guide-to-best-practices)
I heard an interviewee on Mixergy talk about how his company protects clients' brands online and I realized it resembled my own approach to online identity management. He said you can't control what people say about you, but you can deliberately fill the internet with information of your choosing. I have lots of online accounts and they're all in my real name. (A password manager helps for keeping track of them all.) If you google me you'll find my Twitter, my Google Plus, my Flickr, and on and on. You'll also find that my accounts reference one another. Most of them reference my personal domain, which references my Google Plus and my professional domain. My professional domain references my LinkedIn while my Google Plus points to all my other social media accounts. And I also have an About Me page that points to a lot of my social media accounts as well as my personal domain. Someone claiming to be be would have a very hard time convincing anyone interested in the truth.
they should be able to help
"OMG! Like, Tiffany? She totally told Heather that I had sex with Trevor. I mean, no way! He's such a dork! Anyway, Heather told Megan who told Sierra who wrote a note and passed it around 7th hour band and now everyone in the school thinks Trevor and me are an item! My life is like totally ruined! Now I'm afraid no one will ask me to the prom because they're all gonna think I'm a slut!"
That's what you sound like, and your doxxing problems are going to be about as meaningful a year from now. Your life will suck for a short period of time, then everyone will forget about you and move on to the next bit of juvenile drama.
If you're honestly concerned about your safety (not just your reputation, that damage will blow over and be forgotten) take the evidence to the police and get real legal advice instead of asking a bunch of jerkwads on a random tech web site.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Social Security numbers are most assuredly NOT supposed to be public records. Businesses try to treat them as if they are, because they like the idea of having a unique identifier for every person in the US.
Don't ever provide your SSN to a website.
#DeleteChrome
Wait a couple of weeks for the internet's ADHD to kick in and everyone to move on to something else. Problem solved.
Dealing with doxxing is sort of like fighting the tar baby, the more you fight, the more you struggle, the worse it will get. Stop arguing with the forum owner and moderators, you're just making it worse. Don't reply to the e-mails, just block them (or avoid checking e-mail for a few weeks). Ignore your social media for a few days. For goodness sake, stop checking Google. No one who you would want to work for is going to take childish pranks on search results seriously.
I was listening to a podcast just this morning with Kevin Smith and he mentioned how, when the "too fat to fly" thing happened he was devastated. It was the top story on Google for days, social media was unkind to him and he worried about his career. Then, the next week, the story went away as people found other things to entertain themselves. The Internet will hit you hard and fast, but then the storm passes and no one will care next week. ... Unless you fight it and keep making yourself a bigger target.
Post fake doxxes and enough fake info mixed with real info, that google searches dont reveal anything real. If you are up for it, kill you public accounts (emails, social media), and start a fresh.
You can't become someone new in real life, but you can become a new person on the Internet, someone nobody cares about anymore. There are probably millions of doxx out there, and nobody has time to SWAT all of them. If your old identity disappears, people will stop caring.
Change your email, create new logins for your forum and social media sites and give the new identity only to people you absolutely trust. And stop going to the forum that doxxed you (or if you insist on being a moron, create a new login).
Two comments: first, this only works if people are interested in you because of who you are on the Internet. If you're somebody in real life, you're screwed, but you can probably get the cops to care. Second, yes, this is totally letting the doxxers win. But once your info's out there, it's not about being right on the Internet, it's about keeping your house from burning down.
This. Wish I had mod points.
In a perfect world one could be honest and use their real identities online. But we live in this world where shit's messed up at the moment.
Unless you need a public persona for your job, or are really committed to being on the front line of an info-war, you are a naive fool if you don't carefully take all prudent measures to preserve your privacy. The "social" fad has just created human cannon fodder for trolls, corporate identity mining operations and nation state surveillance.
So it is with regret that I must inform you: we need more people like you to keep getting doxxed and screwed as collateral damage until enough people wake up and realize that privacy is a pivotal component of a civilized and free society. Good and honest people have the MOST to hide if they want to avoid getting taken advantage of. Don't buy the lies of the "if you have nothing to hide" argument.
Whatever you were doing on the website which screwed you: it should not have required any link to your true identity. If you provided personal info out of free will, then you only have yourself to blame. Sorry for the sour grapes, but there's no recourse. Take the black eye. Soldier on with your life with lessons learned.
Signed your's truly,
{any name I sign with is false}
P.S. Get a password manager and lots of disposable email accounts. If you feel compelled to participate on a forum (hello Dice), do not reuse credentials, emails or nicknames. And even if the administrator is your best friend who you trust with your life, FOLLOW THESE RULES! It's the blackhat who p0wns his website or the troll who abuses it, who you need to protect yourself from, not your friend.
Quick boys, let's doxx this mother fucker. His name is Kyle and he lives in the San Fernando valley area. Post any other info you have below!
What's wrong with getting doxed unless you have something to hide? Why don't you go ask the Zuck, I'm sure he'll explain to you that anonymity is against freedom.
It isn't a prank, it's not a joke, it's a serious invasion of your privacy that puts you at real risk of physical and financial harm - not just mental.
You need to hire a lawyer and start suing them. Don't send warning letters and requests, send subpoenas and court orders.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Remember that homeowners and renters insurance have personal liability coverage in it. Parents are civilly responsible for conduct of their children. This is the money you will go after in your lawsuits. Plenty of the actors will have sufficient coverage to turn this into a windfall for you.
More often than not, 'doxxing' is just compiling information that is already available on the internet. People think they've been 'hacked' or 'stalked' but they often forget that they posted the information in some forum/comment section using the same username they use everywhere.
Also don't forget that once you're circling a target, you can find what someone else has posted. Like if you know someone comes from a particular place or goes to a particular school, just crawl through everyone else's social media feeds until you find the person you're looking for even if they're not tagged or named but they're at some event or class or group or whatever. A lot of "doxxing" is basically casting a big dragnet and have your own personal army sifting through it until you find the person you're looking for from vague references that ordinarily wouldn't identify you..
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The police don't care, and since the forum owner is on the other side of the world it's unlikely there could be any legal consequences
You can make it go away with enough cash. Either bribe the forum owner, Or hire some people who are within a stone's throw of the forum owner to make the problem post go away through any means necessary, up to and including physical force and violent coercion.
If they're outside the reach of the law, and they're doing serious harm to you, then I guess you could possibly have to go around the lack of law through vigilante tactics that would otherwise be illegal.
Ignore them. It will pass. And then forgive them.
Unfortunately, congress never made a law that says the Social Security Number cannot be used as an ID. They did print that on the Social Security cards for the first couple of decades, and the government is required to issue you a privacy statement if they ask for your Social Security Number. It is good practice to not use the Social Security Number as an ID and we should encourage the practice by refusing to do business or be an employee of a company that uses the Social Security Number as a means of identification.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Accept the fact that you allowed your personal information out into the world and are now facing the consequences of that decision.
Bingo. Whether careless or willfully complicit, the results are the same. Now you're screwed.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
8 oz of whiskey, ice optional, in a glass of of your choice.
Minimum 3-4 servings recommended daily, more is encouraged but not required. Repeat as necessary until the symptoms subside.
I think Barbara Streisand probably has some good advice on this subject.
Seriously, though, once your information is out, what do you hope to do? It's like complaining about spammers - get a better anti-spam system. Be prepared to filter aggressively. Do not engage.
But I guess its too late for you now grasshopper.
Put on your adult pants and grow the fuck up. Your personal information has been out there all along, so get over it.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Are you by any chance that YouTube troll that claims to have been doxxed on the EEVBlog forum, but of said dox there are no info on the Internet whatsoever?
You actually have to for a variety of finance services.
If they're sending you interest income, they have to send out a 1099-INT with your SSN on it. The IRS also gets a copy, which they use to verify that you didn't lie on your tax return.
Yes and no.
You can buy all kinds of info about my name from a public records site, because NicBenjamin's RL name is probably not Johan Czerpinski-Al Ahmed.
But Desler? you'd have do some research to figure out which Desler to ask for.
Live your life like you don't care what people know. And if you need to keep secrets your opsec better be perfect.
What did you do that this is such a problem? If you've been an asshole maybe you'll reconsider future behaviors. But tell us the grand story about how the forum mods and owners were unjustified.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Elaborate on why being doxxed is so bad in your case. I rarely hear this term outside the realm of script kiddies. Anyone else seems to be able to post their CVs, kids pictures, favourite catfood and whatnot without getting harassed.
You actually have to for a variety of finance services.
Any service (financial or otherwise), where you might be paid money or given consideration, will require the SSN for the W-9 form, and the SSN is used to complete 1099-* forms.
Basically... any service that facilitates monetizing or generating a profit for the customer, such as Ads for your Blog, or Uber where there is Cash exchanged for giving rides.
Yeah. Let's get this guy. I tell you what we ought to do, is .....
Oooooo! Cat videos!
Have gnu, will travel.
You can always do what I did. Anonymous Canada "D0xed" me a couple years ago, because I pointed out how week their OpSec was (they were posting highly sensitive d0x-in-progeress about minors on an open forum with no login or password required.) Once they released their incredibly cursory and inaccurate collection of stuff from public source, I replied with this: http://obsceneworks.com/blog/o...
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
boo hoo. if you can't stand by your words with your real name then fuck off. sincerely, anon.
Flood the internet with fake and silly stories and data about yourself so that people cannot tell the real from fake.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't know how it comes off on the callers end, but you can also opt to block callers on an iPhone also and then they cannot reach you - just go to the recent call list, press "i" and you get an option to block that caller.
Google voice might let you block ranges of numbers though? That might be helpful if you were under some kind of robo-attack (I had one call bank that tried to reach me with three sequential numbers, luckily after that they gave up [or ran out of numbers])
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The main part relevant to this problem: responding to many stalkers even with negative / threatening behavior is a form of positive encouragement, and they'll keep at it. The only solution is to filter YOUR experience (delete / don't listen to VM, don't read emails etc) rather than trying to get the unwanted inputs to stop.
That way there's no feedback to the jerks on the sending side, they get bored or angry at someone else, and go away.
One subtlety is: don't turn off your phone, or leave a outbound message saying 'I will not be checking this voicemail because of the jerks". That's encouragement. Change nothing. Get a 2nd phone as needed, use that.
Likewise, don't setup an autoresponder saying "I don't read this email because of the jerks" - same logic as above. GoF is a very worthwhile read, for everyone.
Mmmmm... We don't really get a choice in this, most information people are commonly concerned about are public information.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Upgrade your phone line to a premium number.
If you're a dick or a complete asshole, get used to being kicked off every chat forum you enter, eventually
Stop whining
Grow some nuts and be a ma .. whatever
Stop being such an asshole all the time. Take a sedative ..
When you die the number gets recycled Not currently.
http://people.howstuffworks.com/question719.htm
see question 20
http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html
Given the current rate you are looking at 30-40 years before re-use will become an issue. My guess is they will have to fix this fiasco before then. Probably with some sort of two factor auth. It is an interesting problem. How to uniquely identify everyone. The SSN does that well. The problem is 'are you who you say they are'. Which is some sort of public key that goes along with it or two factor.
First, contact the Crash Override Network as they will better be able to work with the specifics of your situation rather than having Slashdot respond to an overly generalized question.
Second, drop the attitude that the world "doesn't care." Having someone tell you that you aren't providing them enough information for them to act on is not the same as not caring. It means the ball is still in your court. I work for a hosting company and frequently hear the guilty trip line that if we don't monitor the impact of every single bit that flows over our network then we "don't care." Usually this is said by someone that contact us over the phone and expect us to disconnect a customer just on their verbally. A hosting provider has contractual obligations to it's customers and usually can't remove individual items. Instead, the hosting provider can only disconnect an entire customer (including legitimate websites hosted on the same server) or continue to provide services to the entire customer. I have yet to run across someone that include the words "doesn't care" when making an abuse report without also resorting to also attempting verbal abuse and laying down a guilt trip. If that is the attitude you are going to take then at some point your declaration will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Instead of measuring your lack of success in terms of "caring," pay attention to what you are being told is required for them to proceed. If they say it take a court order for a hosting company or the policy to take a server offline, then they are telling you that because that really is what it takes. They aren't telling you that to try to make you feel like no one cares. If they need a court order or more written evidence then the ball is back in your court to address the requirements. If you are failing to listen to what is required or failing to provide what is required then it might be possible it is really you who is failing the "care" scale of trying to take care of things.
Hopefully if you contact the people of the Crash Override Network, they will be able to work with the different organizations involved while being able to filter out your crappy attitude.
Something doesn't smell right about this. They're asking for advice in a potentially unfriendly forum (read: it doesn't purge material) and may not be fully honest about their intentions.
If the Anonymous Reader is honest in their intentions for seeking advice, I hope they will understand the reason for suspicion.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The amount of information out there on people is shocking. In 2008, there was a guy selling a custom camera attachment on a video camera forum I frequented. People started complaining that he had their money but they couldn't reach him. He hadn't posted in weeks. I decided to try to find out more. I found out his real name and city from his use of the same id on other forums. From this I found phone number and his address (and a google street view of his house). I even found the reason for his lack of communication; he had lost his house in a mortgage foreclosure. A week later he finally logged and confirmed what had happened. That's a hell of a lot of personal information to pull off the web in less than an hour starting solely with a forum id.
So you're asking them to have a known harasser, Chelsea van Valkenberg, take on the case?
If they're not involved (directly or not), that group would make things worse.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It takes all of two minutes to put a name, address, phone number and most other publicly available info together with very little actual info to start with. I saw a mention of some open source projects and some websites. All it would take is a mention of the names of the projects or sites and I could probably tell you what you had for breakfast by the end of the day. You are making it worse by trying to "fight" it. It sounds like you have ticked someone off, and as soon as you quit fretting about it, they will decide it isn't worth their time to keep messing around.
Now it is called doxxing. In the 80's it was, as another poster pointed out, called the phone book.
Worse possible advice ever, that will just pour petrol on the flames, and make it worse. There is nothing more fun for a baying crowd of assholes, than a target that fights back. Your supeanas will become badges of honour.
Just hunker down, grit your teeth and wait it out, they will all eventualy wander off when the fun ends and stop bothering you.
Remember the streisland effect.
..and make yourself invisible, if possible. Stay away from forums, never use your real information, avoid so-called 'social media'. So far as 'recovery' is concerned: They'll get bored before too long, so long as you don't 'feed the trolls'. Don't respond to them. If you're being threatened in real life or your property is being damaged, then involve the police. Otherwise just ignore it and it'll stop on it's own.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If you sue, the media will not think "oh, this random stranger is being a shmuck, lets talk about it. Instead they will say "X corp. is being a shmuck, let's talk about THEM.
But frankly, the media is not likely to talk about it at all. Instead, what is most likely to happen is that once the people get court orders, they will suddenly become reasonable and say "we can handle this without the court right?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If you've already been doxxed the damage is already done. Might as well enrich with a few extra houses.
...a known harasser of others.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
" yes they kept pestering me for months"
Pesky algorithms. They should know when to shut up.
Seriously, I thought Google's "customer service" and whatnot was merely (mostly?) sophisticated spam, Turing-contest bots, and that you had to write a really nasty, threatening letter to get past the filters to a human.
If I read right the OP said or implied that s/he was a software developer of some sort (Github?), so I think in this case an online reputation does matter. So unless the OP is Linus Torvalds, a bad web rep means your chances of getting hired or contracted for a project is significantly impacted.
It's way way easier than you think. Without even lifting a finger, handled.
"I'm getting bombarded by email and social media, even via GitHub."
Its called social networking.
"social media" is something made up by dinosaur media companies broadcasting on TV and radio that are still trying to be relevant.
Remember the movie The Social Network http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12... It 'doesn’t sound right if it was called "The Social Media" does it?
Until the 90s Massachusetts used social security numbers as License numbers as a default. In the 80s they started giving the option to use an "S" number instead. I jumped at it, and when I did a bunch of unpaid parking tickets disappeared from my record.
Fight Spammers!
You should DoS the forum until either the forum removes the post or the webhost shuts down the forum. The internet is still a wild west, and if your attack is effective terrorism still works. If they're big enough to sign up for CloudFront or AWS it probably won't work.
Hit the power button and go outside.
I read that as "Second Life is over. Suicide is the only course of action left to you, sorry." well, either way.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Oh, thanks for correcting me.
You see a job post that you seem like a good match for. You send your resume and get no response. Did they find someone else first? Or did they google you and find some old outburst of yours online?
Do you now have no opinions about anything? You say you like Coke better than Pepsi? There goes your shot at that automation contract for the Pepsi distribution center. It's one thing to use your real name in professional developer forums, but for just random online bullshitting (like Slashdot) it has a large downside and basically no upside.
You can get tax ID numbers issued that are not a SSN, and people with a green card will have a nine digit alien number. The problem is a lot of places that do cheap automatic screening of info will deny attempted use of such numbers because it turns out they are not SSNs. I guess it lets companies get away with not hiring legal immigrants, as I've known people who had job applications denied because they used an alien number. I've also had a local business refuse to setup a business account for me because they complained my company's tax identification number is not a valid SSN for tax purposes.
Oklahoma did that as well until also sometime in the 1990s.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'm sorry but we need to nuke him from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Seriously. Anonymity is a legal fiction and an illusion, and almost nothing you say anyone gives a damn about anyway. I mean, my God, seriously, what do you think is going to happen? Being embarrassed because you hold some sort of unpopular opinion? Currently in the U.S., the big news is that Carly "HP rose 6% when I was fired" Fironina, is considered to have "won" the Republican debate over Trump the Clown, because she brazenly lied multiple times about Planned Parenthood! And you think you're going to be affected by some pro- or anti- Gamergate opinion?!?
The problem, ultimately, is that people really don't know who is wrong or right - so as a shortcut, they look to see if someone "caught" acts as if whatever it is they've been "caught" doing is embarrassing. This is why Trump is leading right now. No matter how wrong he is, or stupid, he never acts like it's important. So instead of clutching your pearls over some opinion you have, trying to "erase" someone DOXing you, when you really should be posting the entire DOX, saying "See what assholes these people are, trying to DOX me instead of actually engaging in a contest if ideas? That's because they're wrong and they know it. They can't fight my ideas, so they attack me. I guarantee that you will get an outpouring of support for whatever you believe in.
TL/DR: I don't censor my opinions. I call 'em as I see 'em. Under my own "brand", as you will. And I guarantee you, I'll never be embarrassed being myself. You shouldn't either.
God bless?
little late for that.
I keep saying this, but nonetheless unless you have a legal obligation to provide real info don't. The problem is your data goes in databases and you have no idea how long it is going to be retained. Closing your account doesn't even delete the data. Next, change all the info that is relevant... STOP USING REAL INFO.. esh... I'm not going to say it again.... you aren't getting checks from these people they don't need your info.. New Github account New Phone/E-mails New Everything that can be remade. For non-essential accounts use bullshit information. Use different information on each site and record them somewhere safe. You can parrot them back if you have to. Close all of the accounts they are bombarding. Solved...
Well, just ask your DoJ and RIAA, they will have them shut down faster than MEGA in New Zealand.
I'm not saying it's your fault, I'm saying it's hard to unring a bell. Best you can usually do is wait until the sound dies down and nobody can remember hearing it. Unfortunately, search engines have a long memory. Changing your name, addresses, phone numbers, and known associates is probably going to be the quickest, although probably not the least painful, path.
... It is good practice to not use the Social Security Number as an ID and we should encourage the practice by refusing to do business or be an employee of a company that uses the Social Security Number as a means of identification.
Good luck with that.
Let me guess. Is this @srhbutts aka Sarah Nyberg, the self admitted pedophile?
You don't, that's why you never - ever - post personably identifiable information on the Internet.
... email address. I have many email addresses and I don't register anywhere with one that anyone i know in real life would recognize.
Since you apparently didn't take that precaution, the solution is to kill that identity or embrace it.
You kill the identity by going dark on it and creating another that cannot be traced and is not associated with the previous identity. Then you can participate on the forum etc using that new identity.
People will forget the old one and eventually stop talking to you on it.
This is one of the reasons I use email clients. It allows me to check 10 different email addresses at once. Webmail is shit.
The alternative is to embrace the new identity. You say "Yeah, I am bob... I live here... deal with it." This will restrain you to some extent since you're going to have to not say things that you'll regret later. However, it is also powerful to be out in the open as well.
Depends on what the forum is... is this for child porn or something? what are you doing on this forum?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
And people keep asking me why I'm not on facebook
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
posting to undo a mistaken moderation
or take the opposite approach and have multiple online personas. the trick is to first create a backstory for each. just making up a name and age isn't enough.
Get TOTALLY off the net for a week. Get out of the house/office and spend a week in the mountains or along a coast or a river near a small town. Eat/Shop at the local spots where the locals do. Ditch the tablet and cell phone for the duration.
You may be shocked to discover that huge numbers of decent people rarely, if ever, even use the net and still in 2015 interact with each other in person, use cash, and shake hands. Good food can be had from people who cook it in a mom-and-pop food shop unaided by the web. Money can change hands without the web, without anybody spying on the transaction and enhancing their profile of you and what you're likely to buy and might want to see ads about. You'll discover you can spot good places to eat by watching where the locals go, rather than looking for "likes" on facebook. You'll discover you can see amazing scenery IN PERSON rather than in a cropped-and-edited image on Pinterest or Instagram.
My point is that the combination of corporate marketing and pressure (driving people to the web where they can be analyzed, spied on and monetized), shiny flashing things (the tendency people have to gravitate to new tech and new stuff) and social pressures ("you NEED to be on Facebook, dude!") have completely brainwashed a large part of the population to ignore the REAL world that ACTUALLY matters (where people are born, live, and die and hopefully interact with others in person while making the world a better place) with a virtual world (that does not really matter at all any more than graffitti on a wall in Rome in 100BC matters) that could rapidly cease to exist in an instant if a real world war or large natural disaster occurs and may not exist as it does now in a new "thing" comes along that's "better". People need to keep this in perspective and occasionally unplug as a reminder of what ACTUALLY MATTERS.
There are many of us you are on the web every day and use it for our businesses who, nevertheless, keep it in perspective and still DO conduct some of our business in-person and on a handshake with people who have actual reputations. Try it.
My co-worker and spouse were murdered in their house last year, sometime during the night or early morning. The police still haven't solved the case (or caught any suspects they might have that they're not revealing). There were no signs of break-in that the police have revealed. Initially it was thought to be an accident but further investigating led them to determine it being a homicide.
One was the general manager of a (fairly) big company that had a few enemies in the industry. They gave out their cel # to customers all the time, and had a regular (listed) phone number and address in the directory. They played sports and had a big tag on their bag with their name and full address and phone number. They had a Facebook profile that was completely public and open.
Now, I'm not saying that having all of that information completely accessible to someone led to his death, but I'm sure it didn't help him out either, and probably helped the killer(s) know where they lived.
Needless to say as soon as it happened, all of us in my family took our real Facebook profile pictures down and replaced with non-personalized photos. My wife, kids, and I changed our FB profiles to be completely private, just in case. However, I never kept any info on Facebook like my phone number, address, etc., and I was already always careful about what was public and what wasn't before that happened. It really hit home for me. Who knows where the lunatics came from that killed those two people, and why they died. Could have been family, or friends, or co-workers, or a customer, or even a teammate.
Yes you can always follow people home from their job or recreational activity to know where they live, but that's a lot more difficult than typing a few characters and finding out without needing to even get up. Makes a killer's job much easier.
Posted as an anonymous coward for obvious reasons.
If somebody trashes you online ("Joe Shmoe (made-up name as example) is a terrible guy and a rapist who lives at xxxxxx and is married to xxxxxx and has this phone #....") it can be mighty unpleasant, difficult to resolve etc. BUT anybody in the real world who KNOWS Joe Shmoe will know it's all dishonest dirt and ignore it. People in the real world who do not know him might fall for it but generally do not matter, and so-on.
Obviously this stuff is bad and can be dangerous (in-part because so many morons live on the net and believe everything they read there, and so many "social justice warriors" are eager to join the mob and attack somebody in the real world based on crap they read on the web).
SOME of this can easily be fixed by legislation, some of which can be driven by lawsuits. In cases like swatting, for example, Police should not be permitted to storm a house without first trying to peacefully find out if there is a problem (duh!) and if enough people who've been swatted sue enough of the cities involved these reforms will kick-in.
SOME simply cannot be fixed because of legal jurisdictions (US laws for example do not and never will apply in Moscow nor the other way around - and no treaty that pretends to fix that ever actually will). In many of these cases, however, the damage done by a jerk halfway around the globe is limited. In cases where a business in your home country that is supposed to be supporting YOU (like a bank or phone company) is involved in a problem originating outside your home country, they need to be challenged, in court if necessary, for being party to fraudulent activity with a foreign fraudster while YOU (their actual customer) are locally available to verify the fraud.
In summary, it's NOT that I was denying the problems that can occur, but rather I was highlighting several important points people seem to be forgetting:
1. The real world is always more important. (hint: even in a legal sense, where businesses should be challenged when they end-up supporting bad virtual behavior even though the real innocent party is in their real-world proximity)
2. It's easy to get depressed and bogged-down in all this stuff because it's easy, particularly for younger people raise on the net, to lose perspective.
3. The very idea of having a "net presence" leads people to do the sorts of stuff online and place the sorts of info online that in-turn expose them to many of these risks in the first place. Do you really NEED a Facebook page? a Twitter account? A Linked-in Page? (did you NEED them a decade or two ago????) and did you really NEED to place all your family info and that of all your relatives on hackeverybodyiknow.com (i.e. ancestry.com) and did you NEED to put all that stuff about your friends and family and activities and likes and dislikes on all your "social media" sites (which are actually anti-social media given that they are replacing actual human-to-human contact and in-person exchange of info)
We who are geeks/nerds/coders/etc need to be politically active to drive legislatures to force businesses and government to make it easier for people to clean things up in person and make it harder for anonymous people with unverified locations and unverified identities to do ANY harm to ANYBODY, from swatting, to financial transactions, to setting-up/modifying/closing accounts etc. This stuff is basic and simple (example: bankers USED to meet their customers in-person when opening/closing/changing/draining accounts and yet they were more-profitable than many are today) but will continue to be complex and risky as long as these corporations successfully lobby and bribe lawmakers to not require them to be responsible. Massive new federal Dodd-Frank-style laws are not needed; very basic SIMPLE (one page or less) state laws are better but will not happen as long as non-tech people who rarely think about this stuff are not educated on it and tech people are not involved in fixing it.
Good morning Mr. Cameron!
You do know that Streisand was just trying to stop aerial photos being take of her property by a company (I bet you can't even name it) that she believed were an invasion of privacy right? She wasn't really being a shmuck she was making a high-profile response (1/2 million dollar lawsuit, or something along those lines) to something that had a negligible effect on her existence in reality.
The solution to a bad hangover is to not drink excessively the night before.
If you hang with assholes, and participate in assholery, prepare to be a target of it eventually. Was this 4chan? This sounds like 4chan nonsense drama. Fortunately for you, it will blow over quick.
But I have to say, the sure sign of being a little bitch is participating in net.BS and then crying -- to the police! -- when the tables turn. Knock it off already.
You've never been stalked, I take it.
I have.
Twice.
The first time started just as I was planning to get a new job and relocate. An easy solution, that time. From the start of a job search to relocating about 1,000 miles away was 3 weeks.
2nd time, about 9 yrs later ... ... it gets a little scary. The phone calls at all times of the day and night - home, cell, business phones. Not fun.
When someone shows up at your door, at 11pm, thinking you wanted a "booty call" because you were polite, once, 2 months ago, well
Being polite and asking nicely didn't make it stop. My wife and kids were being approached by this person who had decided we were soul-mates. It was scary for my family. The person has a mental illness and the only way that finally got her attention was letting her employer know. She was immediately moved to a different location, then her contract was not renewed a few months later. That was when it all stopped.
Since then, I've changed my online presence completely. I never use my real name (which is highly unique in the world). I don't use facebook, twitter, g+, or any of the most popular social network sites. These are all blocked at the network layer by both firewalls and /etc/hosts on all machines here. For google stuff, I have at least 5 different accounts which are compartmentalized by use. None are used for anything important - basically just to share docs with for specific projects. As a system admin, I'm used to having hundreds of accounts, so this isn't a big deal.
All of that happened about 9 yrs ago. Now only a few references to my real name still exist on the internet with old data, in different states. Nothing current. I don't use the same username on any 2 websites. Every login has a different password. Financial logins and passwords are random and each is tied to a different email alias. A rubber hose couldn't get me to reveal my bank login - I don't know it.
I've learned that I cannot control someone else's poor behavior. To people I meet online, I give a different name than my real name. At this point everyone in my clubs and work use that other name. My father did the same thing with his name and I never knew why. I do now. Family and close friends still use my given name, which is fine. They understand why I use a different name.
No images are tagged with my name online. I ask people to please not post photos of me online at all and even in groups, please do not tag me. That has worked. I had an open, online, photo gallery years ago - google found it and indexed everything. Stalker #2 found it - I moved it, password protected it. Google forgot about it, eventually.
These days, life is pretty normal. Friends can find me. Crazies may, but not in the phone book - no POTS line, only VoIP, which does'nt get a published number. Blocking calls is trivial with VoIP.
Often it's not a matter of allowing, all it takes is one RadioShack going chpt11 and a Bankruptcy Judge ordering your personal data is sold to the highest bidder; then your cell starts blowing up from telemarketers and your suddenly "hot-babe1983" on Ashley Madison!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
And if you wouldn't shout it down the hall at work, don't post it.
And never post a face pict.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I should clarify: keep your digital footprint of your real name and information as small as possible, preferably invisible. By all means, make any pseudonyms as detailed as you like. Personally speaking, there are some sites that think I live in Barrow, Alaska, and that I'm 101 years old. ;-)
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Funny that you never mentioned why they're doxxing you.
But you had to know this was coming, Bennett Haselton because you're just so hated...
Did someone let the thread originator use the internet?
Kind of a paradox.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
So you're asking them to have Chelsea van Valkenberg, a known and proven harasser, take on the case? You're asking for a wolf to the henhouse.
If they're not already involved (directly or not), that group will make things worse. One would do better to study the people that have succeeded against them.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I stopped doing that when the ARPANET was open to my parents, not just grad students.
Now I've told my kid, no faces in body-part pix you send.
If its not encrypted its published, forever. See Lewinsky, Streisand, etc.
Doxxing (stupid word, by the way) is not your problem. Now somebody knows you. So what? Your problem starts, when somebody tries to harm you using this information. And this are mostly illegal acts. Here the police is your friend.
Getting spam? Learn to block the sender. Do not react. Let them do it, until it bores them.