Hi, everyone and welcome back to Happy Hour. 歡迎回來(lái)酒館. Hi, 安瀾.

Hi, Lulu, hi, everyone.

Now why do you think people doxx others?

The thing is there's lots of different reasons. The first one is revenge or just having a personal grudge.

Like exes.

Yeah.

I know a lot of people they will doxx their ex.

Yeah, so it doesn't have to be an ex it could be an old friend they had an argument with. It could be a colleague at work.

Boss.

Boss , It could also be just an argument online that got out of hand.

Disagreement, I think, in their cases disagreement, because they didn't like the way this woman talked about their idol, oh yeah. but this is really, really scary to think because I hate to think that every comment I make, even if I make it politely, I have to worry about having my entire life be made public.

Yeah, and that's another thing as well, particularly nowadays, lots of people have very strong opinions about society, about politics. So that also leads to doxxing, because these arguments can get out of hand very quickly. And the problem is with the internet is the idea of the echo chamber. So people are not used to hearing different opinions anymore.

And Everyone thinks that they are the righteous bunch, yeah.

But then apart from the revenge or disagreement, there's just simple pranks or trolling, especially you see a lot of underage trolls. Yeah. 也有特別是很多未成年人, 或者說(shuō)平時(shí)沒(méi)什么事兒干的, 完全就是噴子, 就是為噴而噴, 對(duì)原來(lái)定向爆破什么的, you don't know that, but it's during the online teaching period, a lot of that it was purely just to disrupt online courses.

I remember.

They're doing it just for fun, but still led to grave consequences.

Yes, so let's move on to the consequences. The first one is very obvious, emotional distress.

Yeah, fear, anxiety, stress, depression.

Oh yeah, and also job loss and reputation damage.

Exactly. Even if they're in the right when you have all of your private messages information out there, it would be almost impossible for you to go back to your original life.

Exactly. And a lot of companies don't want that negative press as well and obviously legal trouble. So there are some countries where doxxing is illegal, but in most countries, as we discussed before, doxxing is gray area, a gray area. It's an area where it can lead to crime. But It's not necessarily a crime itself.

But let's not forget the real life dangers when you have all of your private personal information out there, people can stalk you, they can threat you, they can even stab you.

Exactly. And some cases it has led to that as well.

Exactly. Now to wrap it up, we can talk about how to protect ourselves from doxxing, but I think it's a bit pale because you can't really protect yourself from doxxing, and I'm not here to alarm anyone.

You can have the basic strategies as using strong privacy settings. Try to not share that much personal information. But I don't think this woman who got doxxed maliciously was really sharing excessive amount of information online.

Well, I don't know about this particular woman, but one of the things that always strikes me is obviously I have Wechat same as everyone else. And I see the things that my friends or kind of like colleagues or people, random people I know, what they post on wechat, I'm actually quite surprised, for example, posting pictures of their children.

And posting pictures of some ID documents.

Yeah. Or posting photos of them at work or posting places that are clearly their home or clearly places where they spend a lot of time.

So for example, on my wechat I would generally post nice pictures around Beijing or when I go on holiday, I wouldn't post pictures of my home, 小區(qū), I wouldn't post pictures of family members, exactly. And I wouldn't post anything that's related to my work.

Especially people posting pictures of their kids, and now I understand people want to share their kids, they think all the pictures are cute and to sort of document their kids’ growth. I totally understand that, but you gotta really be careful, especially I think they were saying not for doxxing reasons, but they're saying even just anti fraud, try not to show any pictures that are clear enough for them to get fingerprints.

Yeah Okay.

Yeah, one is that, the other is don't Geotag it. Yeah. I know a lot of people want to 打卡 they say I'm here, Geotag, but when you do that as a habit, you can Geotag your workplace, your home and all of that because it becomes a habit.

Oh exactly. So for example I would not share online exactly where I live. I would say roughly where I live. But I would always make sure that if I do say anything about where I live, it's at least like a 2, 3 mile radius.

Yeah, but when it comes to real vicious doxxing, that's not enough to protect you, probably not, but then maybe I'll talk to Brad about it and see how his expertise in this can help us.

But obviously, you can also be, apart from being... in addition to being careful also do report, don't just suffer in silence report doxxing as soon as you encounter it to website admins, law enforcement, cybersecurity professionals, and also lay low.

I would say because me as an influencer, we do have close 2 million followers which is crazy if you think about it. So I would say we actually already have some sort of contingency plan if it actually happens in a massive way, then I will just stay off the grid and lay low for like a month, till everything passes. Don't try to engage in further fights online or arguments, because you're not gonna win. And You are not going to be able to take it. I don't think anyone can.

Absolutely

So to wrap it up. I hope nobody gets to experience that horrible experience of being doxxed.

And hopefully now you'll be able to describe it in English and understand some of the reasons behind it and also what the consequences of doxxing actually are.

So leave us a comment and share with us what you think about the subjects.

So until next time .

We will see you next time.

Bye

Bye.