Here’s How to Protect yourself From Doxxing Havoc- Simple Tricks

March 11, 2021 By Christine Margret No Comments 5 minutes

It seems that Doxxing dangers are increasing every year, and disrupting online privacy. Doxxing attacks are defined as the way to collect a user’s record to make it publicly available. The nefarious act of making private information public could be dangerous. Therefore, the best way to protect yourself from doxxing is through doxxing preventive measures. You will find the best ways to prevent doxxing in this blog. Before getting deeper into the details, let’s first get some highlights of the stats.

In 2019, a major data breach occurred in which 2.5 million user records have made publicly available. According to security researchers, a dating website group was the victim of the data breach.

The records included extremely confidential information such as audio recording, transaction details, explicit images, and chatting screenshots. The consequences of doxing attacks can turn even worse.

How to Protect Yourself from Doxing

Therefore, it is crucial to understand everything about doxing and the ways to protect yourself against it. It’s what we’ll explain to you.

What is Doxing?

Doxing is a short form of dropping docs. It’s an online harassment trick used by hackers to reveal a person’s identity.

A lot of forums allow users to share personal life events while being anonymous. However, any hacker can trick you through doxing and may reveal your real identity. Therefore, before sharing anything online, be careful of your choices.

In a doxing attack, the attacker finds a single clue about you and then tries putting together other clues to make you exposed publicly.

In simple words, doxing or dropping dox is a cyber-attack that involves revealing your confidential information or identity to the public without consent.

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The Fallout of Doxing Attack?

Depending on the scenario, the fallout of a doxing attack may vary, resulting from cyber harassment, extortion, cyberstalking, or sometimes life-threatening for the victim. Yet, there are a few tricks (Later in this blog) to help you protect yourself from doxxing.

How Doxers Get Personal Information of a Victim?

Doxers may attack anyone from the crowd, or sometimes they target users out of grudge or personal reprisal. To expose you publicly, hackers may use several means for their nefarious actions. Some of the most common doxing sources are:

WHOIS Websites

According to research conducted by FastestVPN, If you are unaware of WHOIS websites, then read through the end. WHOIS is a public database. It stores all the information, including the number, name, and address of individuals who own a website or blog.

The doxers easily contact a domain sales broker or WHOIS website to extract information about a particular user.

Therefore, many website owners pay extra to WHOIS for information security. A lot of users use fake information for domain creation. However, if you have an old domain with real information, then it will be equally risky.

Free VPNs

Its highly suggested not to rely on free sources such as free proxies and VPNs. When you register for a free service, it asks you for the information. As soon as you enter information, these sources store and sell it to keep the service running.

Many marketers buy users’ data in large volumes for advertisement purposes. However, hackers or cyber criminals may also pay such sources to get users’ data that is otherwise not publicly available.

Hacking

Doxers use different hacking tricks to get your information; for example, hackers may trick you with phishing emails to convince you to click a malicious link. When you click a malicious link, your IP address may reveal to the hackers through an IP logging trick. Similarly, hackers also use a trick called packet sniffing, in which they make you connect with free Wi-Fi and monitor everything you do online.

Stalking Social Media

By stalking individuals’ social accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter doxers can collect a lot of information. Particularly, users share much private information on Facebook, including likes, dislikes, pictures, political views, etc.

Anyone can easily follow and collect your information and images if your privacy settings are not updated.

How to Protect yourself from Doxxing

You cannot 100% protect yourself from doxing. However, by following some major steps, you could potentially reduce the risk of doxing threat.

Here’s what you can do to curb doxing havoc:

Control your Social Privacy to Prevent Doxxing

We are living in an age where everyone holds a social media account. Social media is for good, but giving out too much about yourself can cost you. Therefore, to avoid threats like doxing, keep your social information and social handles private.

Don’t share too much of your personal information and make it available for close friends only. It will definitely protect you from doxxing to a greater extent.

Use Different Usernames to Avoid Doxxing Incidents

Unless you’re not creating an online persona, it is suggested to use different usernames on each profile. It will save you from doxing attacks because if each account gets compromised, then the doxer will find it challenging to search for other accounts with different names and information.

Connect a VPN for Doxxing prevention

Don’t go for free VPN services. Always trust a VPN like FastestVPN that does not log your activity.

A VPN encrypts your online traffic and hides real IP address from ISP and other intruders. In this way, no one can find or access your real IP address, and you can safely use the internet.

See What You Click to Get Doxxing Protection

Always read emails properly, and don’t click on any URL that doesn’t belong to you. Read proper app permissions before click to agree. In this way, you can stay secure against doxing and other online threats.

Conclusion

The online world is expanding every day, and it’s getting difficult to preserve online privacy. With the increasing technology, privacy tools like VPN and firewalls are fighting for that preservation. Adopting the latest security tools and limiting sharing personal information online will drastically improve chances against doxing and other cyber threats.