What is Doxing? Detailed information about doxing

What is Doxing?

                  Internet has become a very useful companion of our life as the days are going on.  We can almost find everything that fulfill our daily and also long-term needs. Though, listening the word “Internet” generally we feel positive vibes but there are equally negative vibes of Internet. The most familiar word that significantly relates with the negative sides of Internet is “Hacking”. By hacking one can harm a person as much as he/she can be harmed in real life. So, the doxing concept comes under the “Hacking World”. Whenever a hacker/attacker collects information about a particular person, that are available in online and builds up database for attacking purpose, that is known as Doxing. Doxing is not an attack but combination of different attacks. Information can be collected from anywhere like social media accounts, personal websites and various of more. In a word, Doxing can be described as “Information Generating Algorithm”.

How the Doxing actually works?

                  People think that doxing is a single attack performed by hackers. But no, it’s not an attack. There are plenty of attacks or we can also say ways to extract personal information. The attackers apply these attacks and extract the desired information and that is basically called Doxing. So, Doxing is a process that consists of various information extracting attacks. There are plenty of tools for extracting personal information. Many people public their personal info in their social media accounts, websites and also blogs that can be easily stolen by anyone. People also give their information in fake websites that are nothing but hacking machine. Mostly the doxing is done online through internet. Those sensitive data are collected into the database and stored for future use.

Only famous personalities are affected by doxing?

                      Yeah, we all know that no-one can be interested to extract information of a person who just spend his/her daily life on regular basis. Famous personalities like film-stars, successful businessmen are mostly targeted by this. But if there are envy, grudge or malevolence on each other in order to decline, this step can be performed. So, famous personalities as well as common people both should have awareness about this.

Steps that can keep away Doxing:-

                  Well, there are plenty of ways for doxing and on the other side plenty of ways for preventing. If we can make small changes in our deeds, we can easily keep a distance from doxing. No, those preventation steps mot require a huge knowledge but little bit of common sense can help us to do so. Steps can be followed:----

1.)           Identify which website is fake and which is real.

2.)            Not to provide information in social media that are too sensitive.

3.)            Before clicking on a website always scan the weblink, the contents of that particular weblink.

4.)            In case of provided personal information hide that from public.

5.)            Using a trusted antivirus software.

6.)            Stay away from third party applications.