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?
Unless this doxxing contained anything beyond public records what are they police going to do even then? It's not illegal to post public information on someone (barring things like victim shield laws, etc.).
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."
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Questioner here. By publishing my details on this forum they have started off a campaign of harassment. I also have to keep checking Google and bing to make sure I'm not going to be screwed next time I apply for a job, and that it won't stop people contributing to my open source projects.
The worst part is that although I'm not the one doing it, at a casual glance it makes me look childish. Like some 4channer who pissed off other 4channers.
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.
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.
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 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.
Yup. I may have G+ profiles under my real name and the name I go under when dealing with internet-stuff. My domains point to PO boxes. Good luck mailing shit to a PO box.
Doxx'ers get their stuff from public Whois first, Phonebooks second, legal records third, and insiders of Verizon/AT&T or other Utility companies. Sometimes even having a cop or someone who works at the DMV in the state is leaking the information.
It's very hard to figure out who leaks your information, thus every time you change physical address, you should change utility providers (gas, internet, electricity, phone, tv/cable) until you figure out which one leaked the information. Unfortunately it's usually the phone companies that do this. Good god, when I first got a landline out here in the city, I was getting a dozen calls per day of telemarketers, that I just stopped answering the phone. My Mobile phone, other than the random "obviously fake same NPA-NXX" calls, I get no calls whatsoever. When I briefly subscribed to the Cable Company's digital phone line... I got no phone calls whatsoever than one day I got a call... from the Phone company trying to sell me on switching to them. What does that tell me? The Cable Company sold a list, or is abusing their LNP database.
So... to the OP...
Your best bet if you really want to get away from this crap is to change your physical name (costs about 300$ here and a lot of document replacement costs thereafter) , physically move, even if it's to another unit in the same building (but better if you move to a different city altogether,) change your mailing addresses on everything to a PO box, if you have a job, get a new one under the new name. Delete your facebook/twitter/linkedin/etc profiles and stay off those sites going forward.
I've actually done all of this after I had a falling out with an insane roommate who is one of those 4-chan types. I needed to disappear just enough that I couldn't be found in Google, but anyone who followed the bread crumbs long enough would only come to old contact information. My cell phone number changed as a result of moving to a different area code, so that wasn't even a possibility for stalkers to find me.
But end result is that I've generally not had to worry about assholes doxx'ing me. At worst, I've had assholes that I sent DMCA requests to attempt to destroy the email address sent from with mailbait + botnet, but jokes on them, that email address is only used to SEND DMCA requests.
I worked at one of those background check companies for a while. It's amazing how much information people will give up for the chance of winning a contest, or even just asking.
The credit headers have some good information, but it's nothing in comparison to people filling out random forms for free shit.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
She posted on a board on which people called out others' bad behavior online. Doxxing was against that board's rules. Calling for online-only raids on other sites was against their rules, as I recall. That was around 2004, so it's hardly representative of her current behavior.
Do at least a modicum of research before repeating lies, please.
Said board also bragged about harassing people, including proudly announcing they had one "confirmed kill" -- they were mentioned in someone's suicide note, which they took as a badge of honor. And Zoe Quinn bragged about being part of that community -- until she decided to start playing the Feminist Victim card.
But remember, poor widdle Zoe Quinn is an innocent pure princess and you should give her patreon funbux, plz. And ignore that nasty man she admitted to raping 5 times, he's just a mean old jilted ex.
Oh and definitely ignore that time Zoe and her friend, DailyKOS Intern Margaret Pless swatted a free speech lawyer who had the wrong politics. Remember: Zoe Quinn is a feminist and a girl -- ON THE INTERNET -- which means she's an innocent victim and should be coddled no matter how vile she acts. I mean, pure and innocent. Not vile. Girls can't be vile, that would be as if they were human beings and capable of fallibility -- or responsible for their own actions.
And besides, that Cernovich guy's a conservative, he probably has bad thoughts that make it ok to try to have him killed by the police.
Posting as AC because when you talk about Zoe Quinn, her psychotic supporters (who are currently busy defending Sarah Nyberg, a self admitted pedophile and child pornography trafficker) tend to doxx you, swatt you, and send dead animals to your house. Then act like they never did nuthin' but by god you're evil so you did deserve what they didn't do, and besides, didn't you know white men are the cause of all the evil in the world?
I'm Tina Crumpett, and I work in London in hospitality.
...with apologies to the folks at the old Car Talk radio show.
I'm Luke A. Boyd, and I work as an ornithologist.
I'm Imelda Czechs, and I work in payments.
I'm Turner Luce, and I work in animal control.
I'm Lisa Carr, and I work in car sales.
I'm Otto DeLupe, and I'm a CIO.
I'm Picov Andropov, I work as a chauffeur in Moscow.