It's a wonderful thing to take a vacation - the memories, the photos, the experience. Do you share this experience on social media? What about the birth of your child? Your new pet or home? These small bits of information may seem normal and even harmless to give out among friends Online, but unfortunately, our friends aren't the only people who have access to this personal information. When hackers get hold of this information and expose it Online without our permission, it's called doxxing, and getting doxxed can ruin an individual's life and even take an entire company down.
To help keep you and your company safe, here are your top 5 doxxing questions answered:
- What is Doxxing?
Doxxing occurs when malicious actors expose the personal or sensitive information of other individuals online for everyone to see. Such sensitive information may include full names, dates of birth, phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card information, and anything else individuals may use to target an individual.
You may think this is basic information, but doxxing can have serious short- and long-term consequences for both the victim and criminal actor(s) involved. When the attacker reveals that person's details, others can then also target them with malicious attacks in a never-ending cycle. Victims of doxxing, or their families, may experience emotional trauma, fear, depression, humiliation, property damage, physical violence, and even life-threatening situations.
2. Who is Affected By Doxxing?
Anyone can be a victim of doxxing. The likelihood of victimization increases based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to an individual’s:
- Existing digital footprint and implementation of security settings. Digital footprints exist on a spectrum, where the extremes range from an individual not having any account for social media platform, to an individual having multiple accounts with completely public information. The more accounts a person has and the extent to which the individual has employed security settings directly affect the amount of information available for criminal actors to exploit.
- Current or past employment. The nature of an individual’s employer may affect the likelihood of doxxing. Frequently targeted individuals may include public officials, journalists, law enforcement officials, judges, and/or celebrities.
3. Why is Doxxing a Thing?
Motives for doxxing another person can range from boredom to malice, including harm, harassment, extortion, shaming, coercion, aiding law enforcement, or vigilante versions of justice. While cyber criminals, hacktivists, trolls, hacking groups, and vigilantes commonly employ doxxing as a tactic, any individual can dox another. Generally, individuals facilitating doxxing hide behind Internet anonymity and make it difficult for law enforcement to identify.
4. How Does Doxxing Occur?
A variety of publicly available resources is available online for individuals to exploit and leverage when doxxing another individual. In addition to social media accounts, criminal actors may use the following resources to facilitate doxxing:
- Public records, such as county property tax records, meeting minutes, or voting records for local government
- Online games
- Chat forums
- Blogs
- People search sites
- Family ancestry sites
- Real Estate Listings
People search sites enable the public to search names and other personally identifiable information. Returns from these searches include property addresses, points of contact, family members, aliases, and more associated with the searched information with varying degrees of accuracy.
5. How Do I Prevent Being Doxxed?
- Enable two-factor authentication for all social media platforms that have the option.
- Use different passwords for each social media account.
- Create an email account specifically for social media. Do not associate any social media account with a primary personal or official email account unless required to do so.
- Remove any content from your social media accounts that reference your involvement or affiliation with the public safety sector.
- Have all content that references your involvement with the public safety sector removed from family and friends’ social media accounts.
- Do not list employment information on any social media platform.
- Do not use your work email address to sign up for any social media accounts.
- If signing into a social media account on a shared or public computer, be sure the password is not saved after signing out.
- Always sign out/log off when finished.
If you have already been potentially subjected to this kind of data leak, you'll want to get a dark web analysis. This service is currently free for business owners in Central Texas by filling out the form on this page: https://www.cttsonline.com/dark-web-check/
Ensure that your data and your business is protected and secure from all cyber threats. Contact CTTS today:Â (512) 388-5559.
CTTS is a complete technology solution provider and the leading IT Support and Managed Service Provider for businesses in the Central Texas area. We're located in Georgetown, TX, but we service all of Central Texas and the surrounding areas, including Round Rock and Austin. Learn more about CTTS here!
By Josh Wilmoth
CEO, Central Texas Technology Solutions