To My Readers: An Opportunity to Escape My Terrible Influence
On March 19, 2015, I wrote a post about doxxing.
On March 22, 2015, I wrote a sequel.
The very short definition of doxxing is the publicizing of personally identifiable information on another. Doxxing has its history in the malicious release of private personal information to the public.
What prompted me to write about this issue is that a fellow blogger was accused on Twitter of endangering an individual for his linking to a publicly available property tax document that included a home address.
My position on the issue is that as a researcher, I have no problem linking to public documents, such as nonprofit tax forms and individual resumes. I will not alter the documents by removing personal information. And I have no problem with someone linking to public documents one me if that person is investigating me, especially given that I am in the public eye.
That is where I stand on the issue, in good conscience.
There are those who strongly disagree with me. They insist that I should purge any personally identifiable information (home addresses, phone numbers) even if the document is readily available to the public through expected, legitimate means.
They are concerned that I am leading my readers astray with my position on my own “doxxing.”
Fear not.
In this post, I offer my readers the opportunity to see the light that I apparently refuse to see. As such, I will present some of the commentary from my second post, Doxxing: The Sequel. (Feel free to read the comments section in its entirety.)
Let me begin with my first exchange with a man named Michael Feldstein. (I will not link to his site, but he can be found easily enough via Google should one be so To My Readers: An Opportunity to Escape My Terrible Influence | deutsch29:
