“Doxxing”: A Primer
I learned a new term today: doxxing (also spelled doxing). In short, doxxing involves the spreading of personally-identifiable information (documents, of “dox”) on the internet.
I noticed that some usage of the term presumes inappropriate “dropping” of personal “docs.” However, it seems that the perceived appropriateness of doxxing can sometimes be difficult to determine and seems to be tied to the motivations of the one “dropping the docs.” In his On the Media article dated March 10, 2014, producer Alex Goldman captures the complexity in determining such appropriateness (and, indeed, of defining doxxing):
The word “Dox,” for years an internet term of art for revealing personal information online, suddenly entered the popular lexicon last week when Newsweek published a story about a man named Satoshi Nakamoto who the author claims is the founder of Bitcoin. But I have to say that I think the term is not being very well applied in this case, and before we can decide whether the outing of Satoshi Nakamoto is, in fact, doxxing, we should have a better idea of what doxxing actually means. …Back in the pre-world wide web universe, doxxing, or “dropping dox,” as it was known then, was basically a petty, retributive act meant to shame or embarrass rivals, and to establish supremacy as a hacker. A good example of the classic variety of doxxing occurred last week at Duke University. First, a student named Thomas Bagley outed a woman who goes to his school that he recognized as appearing in pornograpy to some of his friends (in itself a sort of analogue version of doxxing). Bagley, in turn, was doxxed by the CEO of a porn company for having a pretty healthy online pornography budget.In the case of Newsweek’s article, however, it’s more complicated than doxxing as I define it. Generally, doxxing is perpetrated against private individuals without any relationship to newsworthiness or the public interest. The same can’t be said about the identity of Bitcoin’s creator. A guy who invented a crypto currency that has an (albeit miniscule) chance of destabalizing the online payments industry is certainly newsworthy. At the same time, the article ran with a picture of Nakamoto’s house and license plate, easily allowing reporters to discern its location, which, as a journalist, makes me pretty uncomfortable. The article’s impact is complicated by the fact that the man himself denies any relationship to Bitcoin, and Newsweek’s article, while building a pretty excellent circumstantial case that Nakamoto is Bitcoin’s founder, is conspicuously absent any smoking guns. …So what are my conclusions? Well, I think that whether or not Newsweek’s Bitcoin article is actually doxxing kind of rests on whether the author was correct about Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. In the larger context, I feel like it’s only doxxing when revealing a person’s information has no news value whatsoever. But what determines news value is, of course a gray area. In the end, I hate to get all Potter Stewart on you, but when it comes to doxxing, I know it when I see it.
Thus, the motive of the writer as intending to serve the public interest via newsworthiness of publishing personal information is (for Goldman, and for me, as well) a key issue in determining what actually constitutes negatively-connoted “doxxing.”
Not all view the term doxxing as negative. But it’s complicated.
If one takes the term doxxing at its most general, it simply involves “dropping documents.” Yet the definition has nuances. Some refer to “doxxing” the as the publicizing of personal information not otherwise publicized. Yet others maintain that it is “doxxing” for one to even draw attention to publicly-available, personally-identifiable information.
To some, doxxing is always negative. To others, it is not. Again, I think motive plays an important role. If I assemble a dossier of publicly-available personal information on an individual and disseminate it as a means of revenge, I think most would agree that my actions would fit the term “doxxing” in a clear, negative sense. However, if I reference information available on a nonprofit tax form in order to establish that the “Doxxing”: A Primer | deutsch29:
