What Is Doxxing? How It Works & 5 (Tips) To Prevent It

Doxxing is a big word in cybersecurity and dispenses a big impact on someone’s identity.

Doxxing, generally, refers to the act of revealing or exposing someone’s identity or information online (over the internet).

The term is also spelled as Doxing.

Doxing can be done by an individual or group of individuals with an aim to harass, threaten, and get revenge.

Learn how doxxing works so you can save yourself and if you are being doxxed, what measures to be taken for safety is also discussed in this blog.

We’ll delve into the above topics in detail, so you get well aware of doxxing. At the end, you will be able to combat doxing effectively.

Also read: Everything You Need To Know About Eavesdropping

What Is Doxxing?

Doxxing is an act of uploading, posting, or sharing someone’s personal or sensitive information on the internet for the world to see.

It may include information about the victim’s real name, home address, phone number, email address, photos, or other personal information.

In the above example, person B being said as doxxed.

Being doxxed is a form of Cyberbullying.

But it’s not easy to commence the process of doxxing.

I mean, you need details in order to collect private information. Eavesdropping is an act of hearing a person’s conversation which could help in doxxing.

Various terms used in doxxing:

What Are The Examples Of Doxing?

As we now know, the act of exposing identifying information, generally which includes real name, address, workplace, documents, phone number, and others over the internet is called doxing.

Here are some examples of doxing or doxxing:

• Uploading the personal image of an individual.
• Posting phone number and address on dark web.
• Revealing family information, place of employment, etc.
• Fake email sign-ups or pizza deliveries.
• In-person harassment and many others.

Doxing attacks can range in above metrics, but not limited to this.

How Doxxing Works In Reality?

Compared to traditional doxing methods, a lot of changes have been marked in the context of the doxxing process.

Talking about how doxxing works nowadays, it starts by collecting pieces of information about people’s whereabouts across the internet.

You get piece-by-piece information such as address, location, friends’ information, employment details, family whereabouts, and more.

After this, you assemble those small pieces of information in order to rectify personal detail. The process runs for a continuous period until the doxxer finds some sensitive data about the victim.

The best example of doxxing, in reality, are politicians, celebrities, and journalists; being doxxed, causes them to suffer from online mobs and even death threats.

What To Do If You Have Been Doxxed?

When you think you’ve been doxxed, you first think of a person who can do this. You need to act quickly to stop the spread of your personal information or any possible severe outcomes.

You can do the following things if you feel being doxxed by someone:

• Take a screenshot or any evidence and run to the police for complaint.
• Lock down your account for a while. Change your password and enable the two-factor authentication feature.
• Ask a friend or family member for help and support required.
• Secure your internet browsing by protecting your data and installing antivirus programs.

5 Tips To Stop Doxxing In Advance

You can take pre-actions in order to prevent being doxxed by someone either by a close friend or unknown scammer.

• Use a strong password for your social media and other important entities. Create a password of the combination of alpha-numeric along with a special character and keep it long.
• Keep a second email account for the use of general work or apart from commercial work. You can create a fake email for this. If anything turns bad, your fake email will be deleted instead of the standard one.
• Don’t write your email account and password in a notebook. Instead, keep them uploaded on the cloud and encrypt them with a password.
• Use social media features intelligently. For example, Snapchat uses your location to find out where users connected from. Disable it if you don’t find it important.
• When browsing, use good VPN software to prevent doxxers from knowing about your real IP address and system information.

Conclusion

Doxxing is cyberbullying and you can report a complaint to the officials related to the doxxing attack.

To save yourself from getting doxxed, practise the aforementioned prevention tips at a glance. Do update your password periodically and educate your children about cyberbullying.

Well, that’s all in this blog. Thanks for reading 🙂

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