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?
Which forum exactly is this so we can avoid going to that trash heap?
You know, back in the day they published whole doxxing books. One per town (though you could request another town's by mail). In fact many such doing books were shipped for free to everyone. They were white and yellow too, if I remember correctly.
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
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!
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.
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
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.
No, that's exactly what happens.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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!
AC nailed it.
Remember when Google insisted that everyone use their real names on G+? I never did offer my real name. Google contacted me three or four times about it, threatening to terminate all services if I didn't supply my name.
I told them that I'm almost sixty years old, and that I've made enemies in my lifetime. I wasn't willing to publish my name and address, so that one of those enemies could find me and murder me.
It was a bullshit story - but it made a point. It is stupid and potentially dangerous to post your real life contact information randomly all over the internet.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"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.
I see this argument a lot and it's pretty stupid. Phone books were usually only distributed to the local area, where everyone who got one probably already knew you (or your family) and if they tried to harass you via phone the call was easily traced and police would take care of it.
Doxxing on the Internet is different. Over a billion people suddenly have easy access to your info, most of them strangers and many of them out of reach of the law. It's a completely different scenario.
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
NAME THE FORUM!!!! We can be of more help if we know who it is.
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.
You mean that website that was created by a person that started doxxing left and right and then claimed to be the victim when people told said person to stop?
Yeah, thanks but no thanks.
I see this argument a lot and it's pretty stupid. Phone books were usually only distributed to the local area,
And they didn't contain links to a million other bits of data on you, either. There wasn't much you could do with a phone book back then, really (at least not compared to present day maliciousness).
Really, though, I blame social media and the "Cult Of Sharing Everything" for this shit. It all seems so innocuous to share and share and share and then one day you get doxxed...and by that time it's waaaaaaaaay too late to do a damn thing about it.
I've worked hard to keep a low profile. You won't find squat online about me, even though I have a very unusual last name. Very very few pics, no direct links to my "real life" from my online life, and I stay the hell off of facebook, twitter, linked in, etc etc etc.
If other people want to share their personal info I think that's fine, have at it....it's just not for me. And there have been more than a few times that I've been thankful that I was so paranoid and/or careful.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
As others are pointing out, this is a poor argument and should not be modded up.
Yes, but I'm a mature adult and a professional. I'm not going to "hide" just on the off chance that some nutter is going to take exception to something--that's their problem, not mine. You don't see Larry Wall, Guido van Rossum or anyone else vaguely serious hiding behind a pseudonym for this reason. I've used my real name from the start as a free software developer, Debian developer, and professional scientist and professional software developer; I've also been involved in some heated discussions in my more youthful days, but that's never been escalated into anything outside being flamed by someone. There's a tradeoff here, and I don't think being anonymous/pseudoanonymous is sufficiently beneficial to warrant it; there's a certain loss of trust in doing so, and it hasn't been a problem for me in the last 18 years of free software- and software development-related activity. I don't think it's realistically possible to reconcile being a professional without being completely transparent as to your identity.
You're right that maybe different accounts are in order for different things. I certainly use separate accounts for "work", "free software development" and "personal" stuff, though I use my real identity for all of them in any case. Though in practice the latter two are somewhat blurred--I don't do much "personal" stuff online anyway--it's pretty much restricted to software-related stuff with personal things being primarily offline "real life" activities.
Realistically, do nothing. This will end up falling off the bottom of the page, and people will lose interest / forget. The way to ensure that the problem continues is to respond to it.
Remember the "Bring back our girls" campaign. Had everyone from Michelle Obama down making public statements of support. Go and have a read about how the # tag and search results basically disappeared after a month.
While it sucks now, the people who send you stuff based on a forum are not really invested in you, and once the next object of their hatred arrived it will move on. Keep you head up and weather the storm.
Wait, what? I'm pretty sure that if you side with gamergate, you are the a-hole. Although the whole thing about doxing - that is just wrong. Monkeys fling poo. The internet lets humans fling poo farther and wider than monkeys ever dreamed. Enabling internet a-holes to fling stuff IRL is just wrong. It doesn't matter if the person being doxed is a reasonable person or an a-hole. It is wrong to do that stuff.
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.
If you care enough about flyingunder the radar that you are going to change your name, find the name frequency tables from the census and pick the most common name in your area. John Smith is a 1000x times harder to find that Richard Gazinya.
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.
Whatever legitimacy there might be at the core gamergate complaint that launched the shitstorm is buried under the mountain of insults, rape threats, death threats, swatting, and doxxing of anti-gamergate people. No matter how valid your original point was, if you haven't disavowed the 95% of your movement that is a bunch of assholes, you're part of the problem. If it really matters to you, pick a new tag and start over. But you can't team up with a bunch of babyfuckers and call yourself one of the good guys.