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What is happening to you?

My personal data has been leaked

Doxxing means collecting and publishing someone’s personal data to frighten them or have them harassed by others. The data often comes from old data breaches, public registers or services that resell information. Sometimes it is wrong, but the effect on the victim is the same.

How to recognise it

  • A document with your name, your contact details, the names of your family members or your address is circulating.
  • Someone writes that they already have your address or are looking for it.
  • You receive messages or calls from unknown numbers right after the publication.

What to do

  1. If an address is published, immediately warn whoever lives there and inform the police: spreading personal data to cause harm can be a crime.
  2. Ask the platform and Google for removal; Google removes from its results pages with contact details published together with threats.
  3. Ask the sites that show your data to delete it (right to be forgotten, Art. 17 GDPR): they must reply within one month. If they do not, you can lodge a complaint with the Garante (the Italian data protection authority).
  4. In Switzerland you can ask your municipality to block the disclosure of your data (Datensperre).
  5. Check on Have I Been Pwned whether your email has appeared in any data breach, and change your passwords.

What to avoid

  • Do not confirm or deny the data to people who write to you: even a denial gives information.

Other situations

  1. 01I am being shamed onlineChannels and groups expose you to contempt with photos, insults and false accusations.
  2. 03I or my family are being threatenedMessages or calls with threats of violence, including against your relatives.
  3. 04Intimate images are being shared or threatened to be sharedIntimate photos or videos, real or fake, attributed to you.
  4. 05Someone is using my nameFake profiles in your name, or your name used to accuse others.
  5. 06My website, my accounts or my phone are under attackThreats to take the site down, stolen accounts, a phone being spied on.
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