Doxing is a term that comes from the English word documents. To compose the term, we take the abbreviation for doc (dox) and add the suffix -ing.
Right now, in the age of the Internet, isn’t there a person who doesn’t have a Facebook account, a company that doesn’t have a website, someone who doesn’t shop online?Technology and information technology have made our life much easier. However, new problems, hazards and threats have arisen with the new facilities. Unfortunately, despite the good use we can make of things, there will always be the other side of the coin. A dark side that some people will have, enjoy.
- Doxing is primarily about creating a full profile of a specific person or company by collecting personal information.
- We may think: this information is already public on our social media profiles.
- So what?.
Yes, but this profile created by doxing contains much more personal information that is not public on the web, but which, however, has been obtained through different data connections that, yes, are available for free. In fact, we have references that, although we think are “hidden”, are actually easily accessible.
Doxing simply uses the Internet to search for details about a particular person. The danger of this method is that it starts with a simple name, a username, an age, a phone number, an email, photos, etc. Basic personal information that is the beginning of this type of research, that is, doxing is not only based on collecting already public information, but on using it to obtain more personal data.
This practice, in itself, is not a crime. After all, we only collect information from one topic; however, what will constitute a crime is the purpose for which we use this information or the method by which we obtain it.
The damage to the doxing victim can be both material and personal, this will depend on the purpose for which the information was obtained, although there is always an entanglement of effects.
On a personal level, the most important damage is the sense of insecurity that is generated. Getting the address where the person lives is a clear demonstration that “we’re not even safe at home. “Thus, all of this can trigger an attack of anxiety and moral prejudice, as this information is sometimes used to humiliate, shame and harass the victim. Fear, by the way, is another effect.
At the material level, doxing can result in the loss of bank accounts or passwords that give access to sensitive personal information. All this is linked to the possible loss of money, having to start a new business again, change direction, etc.
Similarly, the consequences of doxing not only affect the victim itself, his family and close friends may be affected, consider that when so much data about a person is exposed, the environment close to that person is also exposed. It creates a kind of snowball that is very difficult to stop.
Once we are on the Internet it is very difficult, practically impossible, to get out of this world and become “anonymous” again. All we have left is to follow a series of guidelines that make it difficult to obtain this information.
The key is to try to reduce and minimize the amount of information we post on our social profiles, sometimes this is inevitable: in this case, we need to strengthen security.
In Brussels (Belgium) a tent has been set up where the mental reading service for volunteers has been offered, some agreed and the fortune teller totally impressed them, he knew all kinds of information about them, information that they had not even transmitted. to the people around them. How did they find out?
Once the information is published on the Internet, a person’s file already exists, although we do not have a social profile, companies and governments work across the network, storing customer data (medical history, account movements, addresses, purchases they make, etc. This is inevitable, but if we pay attention to warnings and pay attention to everything we publish, we can at least minimize the possibility of being, at some point, victims of such malicious practices.