Doxxing as a concept emerged at the advent of the internet. One of the main appeals of being online is the anonymity and privacy that is granted to its users. Doxxing became a tool for control that can be used as blackmail for a person.
The usage of doxxing was mostly regulated to hackers during the early years of the internet. However, the ease of doxxing has increased over time due to the growing popularity and accessibility of information on the internet.
This has left a majority of people vulnerable to being doxxed themselves. Many people share personal aspects like their daily life, where they live and the people around them, leading to a traceable digital footprint.
Teenagers specifically have been found to leak a large amount of personal information online. Across many social media platforms, 92% post their real name, 91% post photos of themselves, 82% post their birth dates, 71% post the city they live in and 20% post their cell phone number.
The backlog of information for a person online has led to criticism especially for influencers that have many people focusing their attention on them. Many of these influencers had developed their platforms during the infancy of the internet and the years of experiences in the online field is what led to them becoming popular.
However, this can cause problems as there is a good possibility that these influencers left remarks or actions captured in their archives that have not aged well. This can relate from the immaturity of the influencers in their younger years or how general societal attitudes changed over time.
These situations can be individually argued if the backlash directed to the influencers is deserved or proper, but the case presented recently resulted only between two influencers based on their sour history together.
On October 14th, a large internet controversy occurred between famous YouTubers SSsniperwolf and Jacksflims when SSsniperwolf doxxed Jacksfilms’s residence live on her instagram video.
This story was seen by tens of thousands of viewers who watched her expose Jacksfilms’s location and led to severe backlash by many due to the dangers it would present Jacksflims and his wife in their personal lives.
This sentiment is shared by senior Maëva Denain on the topic of doxxing and its frequency of use by popular influencers. “I think doxxing is one of the worst ways to blackmail someone especially on the level of exposure and audience that big social media influencers have on their platforms. People definitely feel safer to do terrible actions that they normally would not when they are on the internet. It allows them to be a different person and hide their faces behind a screen,” Denain said.
In protest of the increased doxxing on the internet, people have begun to speak out against this trend. This happened due to the shift of doxxing being something used in smaller interactions online to the large platform doxxing today.
This presents an issue that was very recent and has brought a lot more people into the discussion of how doxxing has negatively impacted the internet landscape.
Senior Luke Shamrell believes the ability for the general public to oppose this kind of harassment from being done so openly without consequences. “We can always limit the information that we ourselves place into the online space. It helps prevent the problem in the first place of people using that knowledge of you to harm and blackmail with. I think we should find the common understanding as a society to see doxxing as a very serious issue and thus take action against someone when they do doxx. This will help prevent a large amount of doxxing done by influencers if they know it will not be taken well,” he expressed. .
Doxxing is a dangerous practice on the internet that is a threat to everyone. Proper mitigation of doxxing’s impacts and proper legal action should both happen when doxxing occurs.
