Today there are many ways to capture or intercept someone's information. In our post we will talk about them but we will focus on the doxing, a new form of hacking that emerged a long time ago but is now having serious consequences for certain groups of people.
If you want to know what doxing consists of and would like to know how to avoid it, you are in the right place since we will deal with this topic in depth, its causes, consequences and solutions. Stay and learn to check what happens inside your electronic device or computer!
Birth of doxing
It is important to know where these terms come from, what they mean, and what caused them to go viral.
Everyone knows that posting private information without consent on the Internet threatens the security of the Internet. Even so, there are people who dedicate themselves to it, mainly to do evil or because they are against certain ideologies. These people are calledhackers«. It should be noted that not all hackers engage in "illegal" acts. To focus more on the matter to be dealt with, we must first define what a hacker is.
A hacker is a person with great knowledge of computers who is dedicated to detecting security flaws in computer systems. Once we know this, we can already know why these people are able to publish the private information of certain companies or people.
Doxing was a term that arose for the first time in the world of these people that we have told you about in the previous paragraph, in the decade 1990, a time when anonymity was something sacred. Even having emerged a long time ago, doxing did not begin to bear fruit for a long time. It was in December 2011 when it began to go viral this hacking technique thanks to the fact that the famous hacktivist organization "Anonymous" exposed the data of 7000 members of the security forces in response to investigations into hacking activities.
What is doxing?
Doxing comes from the term "expose dox", in which "dox" means, in a colloquial way, document. That is, what doxing means is the document exposure, normally in a malicious way, where the hacker wants to take a profit for the recovery of these. Normally, the people who dedicate themselves to this usually do it because they do not agree with the ideas or the policy that are expressed, so, using the "force" they decide to bring to light all the private documents of the company or person. so that justice is done or, simply, to obtain a benefit.
So what is doxing? Doxing consists of disclosure, illegally and without consent, of private information of a company, person or individual. This information can be your mobile phone, work or residence address, your name and surname, bank details, etc.
Is doxing illegal?
Revealing people's private information is not something anyone likes since it can ruin people's lives. Yes, as you have heard, it can ruin people's lives. But how far can doxing go? The answer is yes. We are going to briefly present the example of Ashley Madison.
Ashley Madison It was an online dating website where you could start meeting other people so that you could have a loving relationship. This website received certain requirements by a group of hackers, to which the websites They didn't give them the slightest importance and they denied to give them what they asked for. To all this, days later, the web managers found that these hackers had revealed absolutely all the confidential information of its users. What they achieved was to victimize the millions of people who used this website, putting them in a situation of great humiliation, shame and possible damage to their personal and professional reputation.
So this can't be considered illegal? Although it may seem crazy, no. Doxing is not illegal. It is legal if the exposed information is in the public domain and was obtained through legal methods. Doxing is not considered illegal, but something unethical, which aims to damage the moral integrity of people, intimidate, blackmail and control them. This is the reason why it is not considered an illegal act.
Another important point to mention is that, although doxing is not illegal, the person or persons who exercise it can go to prison since it is still a form of harassment, stalking, intimidation, identity theft or incitement to violence
How can I protect myself from doxing? How can I avoid it?
If you lead a normal life, like anyone else, it is difficult for this to happen to you, but as they say, prevention is better than cure. The key to avoiding this type of hack is avoid publishing the least amount of relevant information about yourself on social networks, platforms or forums. For this reason, we are going to leave you now a list of things you can do to avoid being doxed.
- Having good cybersecurity measures, such as investing in a good antivirus.
- Use secure and different passwords.
- Use different usernames on each platform.
- Create different email accounts for different purposes.
- Delete profiles you don't use on the platforms in which you are registered.
- Having be careful with the permissions you grant to applications, as well as with online questionnaires.
- Avoid revealing information that you consider important or private.
- Avoid giving hackers reasons to attack you (publish private information, compromised photos, etc).
- Protect your IP address with a VPN or a proxy. The function of these tools is to connect first to a protected server to later connect to a public network. This means that the person trying to access your IP address will only see the IP address of the VPN or proxy, so your real IP address will remain hidden.