Dealing with Doxxing

Doxxing someone means releasing their personal information (phone, address, etc.) on the internet, to target and harass them or their family. Journalists have been doxxed by internet trolls, extremists, foreign government officials. This information can come from web searches, social media, public records, and publicly available records accessed through data-broker websites. Read this Nation Article, Who Is Funding Canary Mission? Inside the Doxxing Operation Targeting Anti-Zionist Students and Professors, "Americans who give money to Canary Mission are potentially committing a serious crime by acting as agents of a foreign power".

This guide will help you assess your online footprint, remove personal data from data-broker sites and search engine results, and secure your online data.

The earlier you prepare before an online attack, the more protected you will be against online harassment and intimidation. 

Maintaining your data security hygiene on the web is a process that doesn't have to cost you anything, so make it a regular habit following the advice in this guide. 

Search for yourself in Google using the Results About You tool at https://myactivity.google.com/results-about-you. You must be signed into your Google account. Add your personal contact info and opt-in to notifications. Google will check for search results that show your info and will notify you via email going forward of any results that contain your personal data. You can request the removal of results with your personal data on this tool as well as check the status of your removal request.

Please note that Google crawls the data from websites, so you will have to request to opt out of those sites too. See Opting out of Data Broker Websites.

Data broker sites sell personal information obtained from public records or records they purchase from marketing firms or financial companies. While some brokers may publish your information on the web for free, others require paid access.

We recommend reviewing these lists of data-broker sites that sell your data and manually opting out (requesting that your personal data be removed from these sites). You can also opt for for-pay services to do this for you - see Personal Deletion Services.

Note that some broker sites may overlap on these lists, but checking more than one list of sites will help you be as thorough as possible when opting out. We suggest making it a part of your routine personal data hygiene to opt-out of 10 of these sites per day and keeping track of your opt-out requests as you must request data removal annually.

Pay services that will automatically opt-out of data-broker sites for you:

NYT Open shares "the recommended settings for each platform that will keep your accounts secure. Follow these general recommendations to protect your accounts from compromise or unintentional data exposure."

David Huerta, senior digital security instructor for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, shares tips on how to ensure that your private data isn’t used against you online. From the National Press Club Journalism Institute.

Tat Bellamy-Walker (Newmark '19 Alum), communities reporter at the Seattle Times, discusses their experiences with online harassment and best practices for journalists on digital safety with Carla Anne Robbins, senior fellow at CFR and former deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times. A question-and-answer session follows their conversation.