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Doxxing yourself / Revealing too much personal info online can hurt you - Printable Version

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Doxxing yourself / Revealing too much personal info online can hurt you - Veysel - 12-14-2021

Another aspect I wanted to cover is personal information. Every day people reveal personal info online, whether it be small and insignificant or something overly revealing and now people online know who you are in real life.  What you reveal online abut yourself can harm you depending on what it is.  For example, if you use a weak password such as the name of your child and birth year, then you tell people online the name and birth year of your child, they now have the ability to log into your account.  In the passwords topic, I covered that using complex passwords is how you prevent this. 

However, complex passwords cannot save you from being doxxed.  Depending on your name, you could be very easily searched up.  What do I mean?  If your name is Jim Smith, you're pretty much golden.  Smith is such a common name that you'll get thousands of results.  If your name is unique, such as Aminha, Dionne, Jacinta, etc, you're more likely to be easily searched.  Another prime example of this is that I tried searching for an ex on FB that I haven't seen in over a decade.  (What? We're all curious about how our exes look years later)  She had a common last name, and as a result, I couldn't find her.

Another aspect to the social media doxxing is oversharing. When I was a kid I used to brag whenever I had the house to myself for a night. That is a huge no-no! If someone is looking to commit a crime, I have told them that a child will be home by themselves. This can also apply to going on vacations. We all want to share exciting things, "we're going on our anniversary to Mexico!" That's awesome, but that could also indicate your house will be unoccupied and huge 'X' marks the spot. When sharing posts, be mindful about what you share. It's very easy to share posts from local places you enjoy, but those are also giant signs that say "I live in this area."

For those familiar with Twitch, you most likely know of examples where a Twitch streamer doxxed themselves. For those that don't know, an example of this is a streamer showing their address live to hundreds, if not thousands of people.  Or a streamer showing personal paperwork that has their name or other sensitive information.  For me, I'm overly protective and paranoid about my privacy.  I'll reveal some personal things, like my tattoos, but I will never reveal anything personal, not even my first name.  I'm that protective and paranoid.

I'm not saying everyone should be like this, but you do need to be more cautious and aware of the things you say regarding yourself and your life.

Finally, posting your picture. This is arguably the best ways to dox yourself, because there is only one of your face in the world. Especially in today's modern world, you can easily reverse search a pic and find a gold mine. Ideally, don't post your pic online. Realistically, I know this is impossible. If you are insistent on sharing your pic, at least keep your lips sealed about any personal information. and for fucks sake censor any background that could be used as a personal identifier.