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?
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 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.
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.
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
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."
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.
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.
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)
"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.
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.
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
Serious question. Why?
I always use my real full name. My slashdot account is an exception now (it was my email address back in '97) but my email is real. I don't see the benefit of total anonymity--as a free software developer both as a hobbyist and professional programmer, I don't want to participate in development behind some random handle, I want people to know who they are interacting with both in real life and via email/usenet/forums/bugtrackers/whatever. And vice versa Hiding behind anonymous handles is the exception rather than the rule, and while there are sometimes reasons for it, it's unusual. For whatever subconcious reason, I also tend to prefer to know who I'm dealing with--I'd be more likely to ignore or postpone dealing with a bug report from an anonymous person, for example. For some random unimportant forum it might not matter, but when you're participating in development with others over an extended period (years to decades) it would be a bit weird to be anonymous. While I think "doxxing" sounds like childish bullying, I don't see that hiding my name would help much should someone single me out. If they cared enough, they'd find out anyway.
That said, while my name and email addresses are not kept secret, I do value the privacy of my actual personal details etc., and I wouldn't be amused if they were published, but as mentioned in this discussion, stuff like phone numbers and addresses are "public" if you know where to look. Mine is in the paper phone book and you can look it up online. While it would be nice if idiots didn't abuse this, it's not realistic to keep secret stuff we need to communicate with each other. If you do a google image search for my name, three of the first two rows of images are me; two take you to my work profile page and my work contact details (email, phone, address), the other is my github profile. It would probably only take a few more minutes to work out my home address as well for a determined person. Occasionally I do get people contacting my via all these work details for legitimate purposes. While it would be nice to not have idiots abusing these things, we equally can't wall ourselves off from the world in an isolated bubble.
Regards,
Roger
I've seen this happen to software developers who happen to not make complicated, hard feature some community wants. That's not being an asshole.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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.
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.
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.
boo hoo. if you can't stand by your words with your real name then fuck off. sincerely, anon.
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.
..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 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.
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.