5 Ways Parents Can Address Doxxing Dangers Online

Doxxing is a dangerous practice on the rise that can affect and harm many children. Parents need to be aware of this new digital danger to help keep their children safe. Doxxing is not an uncommon term, but certinaly not top of mind for most parents. Here’s all you need to know about doxxing and the steps to take to reduce the risk.

 What is Doxxing?

The act of doxxing is revealing someone’s information online. This information can be used to identify someone, such as their real name, address, bank details, employer, and more.

Crucially, doxxing is done to an individual without them knowing about it and is often done with the intent to harm or humiliate. Doxxing has become more and more common online as technology has advanced, leading to more children being put in difficult situations.

Some of the methods people use to Dox others include:

• Tracking usernames
• Running a WHOIS search
• Phishing
• Social media stalking
• IP address tracking

Why is Doxxing Dangerous?

Doxxing can be very dangerous for your children to experience. With their information becoming public, it can lead to things such as harassment, both online and in public, as well as stalking and potentially even fraud if banking information is revealed.

As doing so has the potential to reveal home addresses, it increases the risk of predatory behaviour, which many can’t bare thinking about. As well as this, having public information exposed to followers and other internet users, especially if your children want to keep it hidden, can also lead to them being bullied online. Doxxing can also be dangerous for minorities, as they may be targeted with abuse and harassment online.

However, one of the biggest dangers surrounding doxxing is the practice of Swatting. This is where doxxed information is used by strangers to call in police or swat teams to a victim’s address, citing a fake shooting or hostage situation. This has happened to many streamers on Twitch, and swatters usually do this for their own amusement.

Linda Shaffer, Chief People Operations Officer at Checkr, says, “Being a victim of Swatting can be traumatic and potentially life-changing. Individuals have the responsibility to protect their information, but businesses like ours also need to be committed to keeping customer information safe and secure.”

As you can imagine, having a swat team arrive at your property can be a very tense and dangerous situation if you don’t know how to deal with the situation, and multiple people have been injured and even killed after being Swatted.

5 Things Parents Can Do to Protect Kids

Parents worried about doxxing need to take action. Here are a few things you can do to protect your children:

1. Educate Your Children

Education is the best preventative measure to keep your children safe from doxing. By helping them understand the dangers and methods in which they can be doxxed, they can do more online to protect themselves.

One main thing you should teach them is to understand what information they should and shouldn’t share. Make your children aware that they should never disclose information about their address, identity, and bank details if they have any, as these can all be used to cause harm.

2. Check their profiles

Parents should maintain access to their children’s profiles and accounts to monitor what type of content they’re accessing. By periodically reviewing their accounts on socials and gaming software, you’ll better understand how vulnerable they’re making themselves. If you want to limit the type of content your children can access to help them be safe from doxxing, you can also block adult content.

Another thing parents can do is run a search for their kids online. By simply searching their names on a search engine, you’ll be able to see what kind of information comes up, allowing you to see how exposed they are. This knowledge can then help you make their accounts and digital selves more secure.

3. Promote the usage of different passwords and usernames

If your children use the same passwords for all their accounts and have similar usernames across their social media and more, they are a lot easier for a doxxer to track, making them much more vulnerable.

You can keep your children more secure by forcing them to utilize different passwords and usernames. It may be a bit harder for them to remember, but this added security helps ensure they can maintain privacy. As their details are different, it means that if one account is hacked, the others should still be safe.

Use good password standards as well by creating passwords that aren’t easy to guess and contain special keys, numbers, and capitalization.

4. Mask their IP address

One of the most common ways people are doxxed online is through their IP address. These details can reveal the location of your children, compromising them, and sometimes this information can be used to reveal further details.

The best way to protect them from this is to mask your IP address. This is best done with a virtual private network (VPN). The technology of how a VPN works is complicated, but the general idea is that it connects you with a different server, meaning that your device appears to be in a different location.

Volodymyr Shchegel, VP of Engineering at Clario, says, “VPNs are one of the best security programs you can get, alongside antivirus and firewalls. It protects your IP address, making it harder for hackers and doxxers to find you. These days, VPNs are an essential bit of kit.”

5. Remove Information from Data Brokers

You’ll be frightened at how much data about your children and even yourself is available online. When your children sign up for services and accounts, their details can be stored in data brokers, who can then sell that info to businesses who use t for better advert targeting.

Thankfully, you can request that this information is removed; it’s just a bit of a hassle. Some businesses can do this service for you, but if you have the patience, you can start removing the information stored on these brokers yourself.

Conclusion

Doxxing is something that parents need to be aware of. As technology advances, more and more dangers emerge online, and doxxing is added to the list of other risks that parents need to help limit.

There are many things that children can do to prevent doxing from happening to them. Following the advice mentioned above should help. As the issue gets more mainstream attention, expect changes to be made so that doxxing is severely punished, hopefully discouraging the practice. For now, ensure your children are mindful online and are aware of this danger when surfing online.