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?
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.
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1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.