Death threats and job losses: This is what itâs like for pro-Palestine students and activists to be doxxed right now
As pro-Palestine voices rise against the recent Gaza attacks, a chilling trend emerges: the resurgence of doxxing campaigns. This dangerous tactic, weaponized to silence dissent, has now targeted a new generation of activists – young people and college students.
Doxxing, the act of making a person’s private information public without their consent online or in any public forum, makes people a target for harm, abuse and other personal consequences like losing a job. In the digital age, it’s astonishingly easy to dox people as a lot of our personal information is readily accessible online. According to a study by security company SafeHome, more than 43 million Americans have personally experienced doxxing.
Doxxing, or then called “dropping dox,” popped up among tighter-knit hacker communities in the early 1990s as a way to seek revenge or intimidate people. One of the first notable cases of doxxing outside of the hacker world was in late 1997s, where anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley launched a site called the Nuremberg Files, publishing the home addresses of approximately 200 abortion providers in the U.S.
Over the years the practice became more common, aided by a growing digital community and the proliferation of social media, as a tool of repression, or retaliation, or simply harassment.
In 2017, women in the video game industry were heavily doxxed through the Gamergate campaign. In 2019, Hong Kong saw a wave of doxxing amid anti-government demonstrations with at least 1,376 reported complaints of leaked personal information by protestors, police officers and counter-protestors alike. Public figures like have gotten doxxed multiple Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Beyoncé, among others, each having their address, social security numbers and other personal information leaked in a mass doxxing case in 2017.
In the last 60+ days since the war began and more than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed in land and airstrikes, organizers, students and advocates for Palestine across the US have been arrested, had their names, addresses and personal information shared with government officials, received death threats, lost their jobs or had to take off work, and experienced psychological and emotional distress — all for demonstrating their support for Palestinians and calling for an end to the bombing and occupation.
“Doxxing and blacklists have for years now been a major tactic of Israel advocacy groups to suppress pro-Palestine political expression and raise the stakes of engaging in Palestine organizing and advocacy,” Dylan Saba, a staff attorney at Palestine Legal, an organization that provides legal aid to those who support Palestinian rights, told CNN on October 15.
While doxxing has become more common, it still isn’t widely unknown what the chilling reality of this form of digital harassment looks like. By having your name, image or other personal information publicized — in a big or small way — you essentially become a target for harassment, alienation, or physical harm.
So what’s it like to be doxxed?
Imagine your home address, phone number, email, and even your social security number suddenly plastered all over the internet, accessible to anyone with a web browser. That’s essentially what it feels like to be doxxed: a complete loss of control over your personal information and a feeling of being utterly exposed and vulnerable.
The consequences of being doxxed can be devastating. You might face relentless harassment, threats, and even physical harm. Your career could be jeopardized, and your relationships could suffer. The constant fear and anxiety can take a toll on your mental and emotional well-being.
The biggest atrocity for some of the pro-Palestine activists being doxxed right now: death threats.
Casey, a longtime legal activist who asked to use a pseudonym to protect their identity, participated in a large, widely-reported demonstration in October to denounce the occupation of Palestine and call for a ceasefire. They asked Reckon not to name the action out of fear that doing so would make them more easily identifiable and threaten their safety.
Before the demonstration, Casey generally knew the risks that come with protesting. But nothing prepared them for the swell of death threats that would come after being swiftly doxxed following their participation in that demonstration.
Casey’s name, photo, home address, employment information, and social media accounts were all blasted online, in right-wing news outlets and by people with sizable social platforms. People flooded their employer with complaints, even dragging their former employer into the fray. Death threats were sent to their email and social media accounts, public figures were calling them a terrorist and drawing the attention of law enforcement.
After the protest, Casey returned to their home several hours away terrified. As someone who lives alone, they upgraded their security system and moved from their bedroom with front-facing windows to a guest bedroom with a small window in the back of the house. They refused to leave for anything that wasn’t essential, not even to walk their dogs.
“I am still jumpy whenever anyone knocks at the door.” Casey said. It’s taken an inordinate toll on their mental health, forcing them into digital and literal hiding. They have used Delete.Me to scrub their information from the internet and went to stay with a friend several states away.
“A lot of people that I’ve talked to, unfortunately, will laugh it off. And it’s like, but you know what? It takes like one person who cares. Yeah, with a gun. That’s all it takes,” One person who is living with the fallout of being doxxed after a Pro-Palestine demonstration said.
Who’s responsible?
The people doing the doxing — of Pro-Palestine advocates or otherwise — are wide-ranging and sometimes anonymous. In Casey’s case alone, it was public figures, bots, and normal people with a Twitter account.
Anonymous websites like Canary Mission, for example, dox students, professors and groups who “promote a hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews,” and particularly those express their support for the Palestinian cause.
Elsewhere, doxxing efforts come with bigger backing and a name — like the roaming doxxing truck paid for by conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media (AIM). It’s not a new project for AIM, but recently the billboard truck first popped up on Harvard University’s campus on Oct. 11 before making its way to Columbia University, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania weeks following. At each college, the truck displayed the names and photos of students who expressed solidarity with Palestine.
At Dartmouth, it was more innocuous. Student activists Kevin Engel and Roan Wade were arrested on Oct. 28 for trespassing on the lawn of an administration building, after a weeklong protest for Palestinian liberation, which began with a vigil on Oct. 19 to mourn the loss of Palestinian and Israeli lives. After their arrest, Dartmouth President Sian Bielock wrote an email to campus community, expressing that a threat of violence, — not their trespassing — was why the students were arrested.
Bielock attributed the threat to the conclusion of the Dartmouth New Deal — a framework of policies which were presented hours before the arrest aimed at making the college more equitable — which reads that should administrators not respond with a plan to meet their demands in the new year, they’d turn to “physical action. This line, Wade said was directly taken from a previous organizing moment, the 2014 Freedom Budget.
“It was very clearly an indication that we wouldn’t engage in continued campaigns of civil disobedience, as we had been doing for over a week at this point,” Wade said. “It was really disconcerting that she would retroactively claim we were being violent as a justification for needless escalation.”
What’s the impact of doxxing?
After being doxxed, Casey had to temporarily uproot their life, routine and understanding of safety.
“I’ve had things yelled at me by people in the crowd, or sometimes, emails come into my [work email address.” they said, “But it has never been a thing that really felt personal. This time it does, it feels personal and it feels more violent.”
And beyond the mental and emotional toll, doxxing can lead to a stifling of social movements by scaring people out of speaking out, including the loss of job opportunities.
At Harvard, a Palestinian student whose photo was placed on the doxxing truck told the Nation on Nov. 22 that after she was doxxed, an employer rescinded a job offer over her support for Palestine.
“The day I learned that my cousin was killed by the IDF on a raid of his refugee camp, was also the day that I found out that the truck with my name and face on it, calling me an antisemite, would be sent to my parents’ home.” the student told the Nation.
At Dartmouth, President Beilock’s choice to label Wade and Engel violent has had ramifications for the pair, and for the Dartmouth community. Engel called it a “silencing,” saying that naturally a lot of students who found themselves in more vulnerable positions, like international students, students of color, and low-income students, seem more reticent to speak out or organize out of fear of arrest or retaliation.
“We are leaders within the organizing community on campus.” Wade said, “And so this attack on our ability to organize is intended to silence the growing movement on campus to organize in solidarity with Palestine, as well as for other issues that we’re facing on campus.”
What can you do if you’re doxxed?
If you’ve been doxxed, you’ll need to act fast but you don’t need to act alone. First let your support system know what’s happening and ask them to help. They can step in to filter your social media messages, emails, help you fill out any forms, and ground you in a moment of anxiety and fear. You’ll also want to:
- Be sure to log the incidents somewhere.
- Change all of your passwords, preferably to a very strong one.
- Enable two-factor authentication
- Protect your financial accounts and give your bank a call.
- Turn to a secure messaging app like Signal
- Lock down your privacy settings on your social media accounts
- Consider a service like DeleteMe that scrubs the internet of your information
How can folks protect themselves and each other?
The best way to protect yourself is to have a plan for doxxing or online harassment before it happens. Start with beefing up the security of your accounts by having a strong password, setting up two-factor authentication and using a password manager. And like above, sharpen your cybersecurity knowledge. Stay on the alert for phishing attacks, and consider switching to encrypted messaging platforms like Signal, especially for sensitive information.