Doxing: What Adolescents Look for and Their Intentions

Doxing is a form of cyberbullying in which personal information on others is sought and released, thereby violating their privacy and facilitating further harassment. This study examined adolescents’ doxing participation using a representative sample of 2120 Hong Kong secondary school students. Just over one in 10 had engaged in doxing, and doxing behavior significantly increased the probability of disclosing personal information on others (odds ratio ranged between 2.705 and 5.181). Social and hostile doxing were the two most common forms of doxing. Girls were significantly more likely to conduct social doxing (χ(2) = 11.84, p < 0.001), where their target was to obtain social information (χ(2) = 4.79, p = 0.029), whereas boys were more likely to engage in hostile doxing aimed at obtaining personally identifiable information (χ(2) = 4.31, p = 0.038) and information on others’ current living situations (χ(2) = 4.17, p = 0.041). Students who had perpetrated doxing acts were more likely to have experienced information disclosure as victims, perpetrators, or bystanders. Future studies should examine doxing’s impacts and its relationship with other forms of cyberbullying and traditional bullying. Because doxing may lead to on- and off-line harassment, family, adolescents, schools, and communities must work together to develop effective approaches for combating it.