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Have you ever been online and replied to a comment or post? Maybe it was on Reddit or on an influencer’s Instagram. Did other people reply to you, and were any of them unexpectedly hostile? When you’re online, a little hostility is sadly par for the course, but most people brush it off and move on to enjoy other aspects of life online. But what would you do if that unpleasant interaction went much farther than was reasonable? What if one day you discovered the most important parts of your identity had been maliciously and intentionally revealed online? Let’s talk about doxxing – what it is and how you can avoid becoming a victim of this kind of harassment.
Doxxing, derived from the hacker term “dropping docs”, is internet slang for revealing someone’s identity online for the purposes of harassing them. It usually goes way beyond simply revealing someone’s email address or name and may involve personal information like a home address or workplace, SSN, financial information, phone number, pictures, texts, IP address, and other important details. The tricky thing about doxxing is that aspects of it may not be a crime, depending on what you’ve made publicly available online. However, the context in which doxxing occurs is crucial. Often it’s the first step taken to incite more severe harassment. For instance, the doxxer may not plan on taking action against their target but instead hope that someone else does. When put up against a recent Pew Research report showing that 41% of U.S. web users experience harassment in some form, it’s clear that Doxxing is a dangerous trend online.
Doxxing is a problem that’s grown in scope simply because there’s so much more data about us being kept online. Third-party services, called data brokers, capture our account info, the sites we visit, how long we spent on them, and other kinds of metadata to create profiles they then resell to advertisers. If someone gets access to these troves of data, they can reveal extremely damaging information about an individual, or data that allows a person to be damaged. For instance, with a phone number and a current address, some criminals were able to call in SWAT teams on innocent individuals. Political dissidents are often doxxed by the governments their protesting against. And on a lighter note, the adult website Ashley Madison, which promotes extramarital affairs, had their members’ data leaked online, to the embarrassment of a few public figures.
The response should be very similar to the one you’d take if your wallet was stolen. Move fast, stem the loss, and begin remediation as soon as possible. Here are some broad steps that can be taken.
Of course, not being doxxed in the first place is the ultimate goal of a proactive online protection plan. Here’s what we recommend:
Identity theft protection services help protect your data, monitor your online accounts like emails, SSNs, and more. In addition to online monitoring, they should also offer insurance and even theft remediation if the worst should occur.
Before you tag your location, friends, or workplace in a photo think about who has access to this information. What’s gained or lost by sharing all that info? Also, security questions for your accounts should not use the name of your pet or your first-born child if you have posted those on Facebook.
Public Wi-Fi networks at coffee shops and airports may not be secure against hackers and snooping. That’s why we recommend using a VPN whenever you’re connected online. This powerful tool hides your activity and location whenever you’re online on an unsecured network.
Googling yourself is a great way to see if anyone is using your online identity in bad ways.
Social networks allow you to control who can see your data. Usually, with a few clicks, you can restrict what you show online to a great degree. For instance, makes your payments viewable to other users as a default, but can easily be changed to hide them from the public.
Using long, complex, unique passwords for every account is convenient and maybe the best way to prevent your information from being stolen. Yes, we said convenient because with a password manager you only need to remember one key to create and manage much longer ones for all your most important accounts.
The reality is that the more we live online, the more our identities will too. This does not mean we need to live a restricted life online. In fact, using comprehensive online protection, which features most of the tools above, we can remain free to enjoy life on our terms. Doxxing is something to be aware of, but with great protection, it’s far from anything we need to be worried about as we make the most of our lives online.
The post Doxxing, The Internet, and How You Can Lock Down Your Data appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Businesses today have many options for interacting with customers online. The findings of our independent survey of online consumers suggest that websites and branded email continue to be critical components of many businesses’ online presence, essential to supporting consumer confidence and enabling effective interaction with customers.
The quantitative study, commissioned by Verisign and conducted in December 2019 and January 2020 by 451 Research, now a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, surveyed 5,450 online consumers across key markets in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia to help understand their sentiments on interacting with businesses online.
The survey was designed to arm service providers and registrars with an understanding of how the resources they provide to businesses can help create trust and deliver value to their customers.
Among those surveyed, approximately two-thirds (66%) agreed that a business with its own website is more credible than one without. Likewise, a majority indicated that they would expect it to be more difficult to verify the identity of (56%), find online (55%) and contact (54%) a business that does not have its own website.
Certainly, this doesn’t suggest that businesses should abandon other online channels, such as social media and search engine efforts, to focus on a website-only approach. Instead, 64% of respondents said that a business with many points of online presence is more credible than a business with few.
Still, the study suggests that other online resources should complement, rather than replace, a small business’s own website. Respondents identified a business’s own website as being one of the most popular online methods for learning about (69%) and conducting transactions with (57%) businesses. Further, 71% of respondents reported being more likely to recommend a business with a professional website.
Taken together, these findings suggest that a website can help add credibility and drive new business.
Trust is central to the relationship between a business and customers. This may be particularly true for online transactions (95% of survey respondents said they actively make purchases online), which require consumers to trust not only that the business will deliver the product or service for which they have paid, but also that it will not misuse payment or personal information.
A branded email address may be able to help, as an overwhelming number of respondents (85%) agreed that a business with a branded email address is more credible than one that uses a free email account. Respondents were more likely to have used a business’s branded email address (67%), than the telephone (56%) or social media (40%), to communicate with a business during the prior 12 months.
For a small business, failing to be perceived as credible online could mean lost business not just today, but also in the future. A website and branded email address can help businesses add credibility and more effectively engage with consumers online.
Service providers offer a variety of website-building tools, email hosting solutions, and domain name registration services that can help businesses – whether just starting or well-established – to have a website and use a branded email.
Detailed survey results are available in 451 Research’s Black & White Paper Websites, Branded Email Remain Key to SMB Internet Services.
Verisign is a global wholesale provider of some of the world’s most recognized top-level domains, including .com and .net. For website building tools and email hosting solutions, contact a registrar. You can find a registrar here.
The post Websites, Branded Email Remain Key to SMB Internet Services appeared first on Verisign Blog.
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