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What is Doxxing? Is it Legal or Illegal? Everything You Should Know

Doxxing – Is it a new term?

NO. It is not.

Doxxing comes under the category of Internet Vigilantism (monitoring the actions of others) and Hacktivism. This word derived from the “dox”– an abbreviation of the document.

What is Doxxing?

Doxxing can be defined as follows;

• A cyber attack.
• Malicious practice of researching & publicly posted private or identifying details online about an individual or organization.
• Analyzing information posted by the person in order to identify and further harass that person.
• Used to get information from databases available publicly about an individual, social media websites, and social engineering.

Why Doxxing Occurs?

Multiple factors are responsible for Doxxing.

• Inflicit Harm
• Harassment
• Extortion
• Personal Enmity
• Online Shaming
• Coercion
• Business Analysis
• Risk Analytics
• Aiding law enforcement/ vigilante versions of justice

How Doxxing Can Be Performed?

The doxxers can get your private information in various ways. Here we discuss the few ones.

1. Internet Packet Sniffing.
2. Analyzing the file metadata. This can be easily understood by the example. All the Microsoft Office file(s) have ‘metadata’, which comprises information about the document. You can easily view metadata by performing the following steps; Microsoft Office file >> Properties >> Details. This section consists of data about who created this file, when, from which system, and other details too. The analysis of metadata gives great information to the doxxer. Likewise, images have a similar thing named EFIX data; comprises information like smartphone model, resolution, location, and time when it was clicked.
3. One can also perform Doxxing through IP logging. There are tools named as IP loggers whose function is to sniff out a person’s IP address.

How to Safeguard Yourself from Doxxing Attack?

Here we have mentioned 4 major points that you can implement in your daily life to protect your personal information from doxxers.

1. Use VPN or Proxy Server to protect your IP address.
2. Never use Facebook or Google login to sign-up on any third-party website.
3. Avoid using your personal email address to register on forums or other similar websites.
4. It is suggested to hide your personal data from a website’s WHOIS.

Catch Up!

Unfortunately, any person could face the risk of Doxxing or any other cyber attack. If your data, important documents, or personal information is exposed, recovering from the aftermath could be difficult.

Read this article thoroughly and learn about what is Doxxing and how to protect yourself from the doxxers.

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