by Rob Harrington | Apr 12, 2022 | Commentary |
Online harassment has been around as long as the internet. However, in recent years, online harassment has been on the rise in part because of the popularity and access to social media websites. A particularly dangerous form of online harassment is doxing. Doxing is the malicious practice of revealing someone’s personal information without their consent. The phrase has its origins in hacker feuds in the early 1990s and is short for “dropping documents.” This is done to retaliate against or harass someone by outing them online – usually by exposing personal information such as home address, place of work, phone numbers, and other information that while available on the internet, one may not want exposed to the world. The issue with doxing – like any form of harassment – is that it can range from trivial annoyance to a form of threatening that can affect someone’s emotional, economic, and even physical safety. While there are many state and federal laws that punish harassment and stalking, doxing may or may not fall within those current provisions. So, this begs the question, how should doxing be handled? Some states have already enacted anti-doxing legislation. California Penal Code § 653.2 makes every person who intends to put another person in reasonable fear for their safety by means of an electronic communication device guilty of a misdemeanor that is punishable by up to one year in a county jail and/or by a fine of not more than $1,000. Under this statute, there is no requirement that “actual incitement or actual production of the enumerated unlawful effects” follow a doxing event, rather...
