A little while back, I called one of my friends up just to say hey, and when they picked up, I could tell they were freaking out, like their voice was shaking, And I asked what was wrong and they said, oh, I thought you called me because you saw And I said saw, what?

What are you talking about?

And they said, well, it's all over the internet have you seen it?

And I still didn't get it.

So it turns out this friend of mine had posted a TikTok of themselves talking about something honestly pretty innocuous, but some small group of people decided that they didn't like what was being said, and they were being harassed online.

I mean, it was really bad.

The post was full of hate comments, there were hate messages in the inbox they'd gotten docked, and someone had found their mother's email address and was sending the family hate mail.

I had no idea this was going on, and it really bothered me, not just because people are harassing my friend, but because this was the third friend that this was happening to that month that I knew of.

I would say most people do deal with online harassment and don't necessarily talk about it or share or express it.

Rommy Galley is a security professional, and he's been working on keeping journalists around the globe safe for over a decade.

It's sort of like an invisible epidemic cooksorce.

Everyone is so accessible today that sometimes things can just blow up out of proportions, and because you're only experiencing it through a screen, people aren't actually fully aware of what it is that you're dealing with, so it's very isolating.

Romi actually started his career as a combat medic in the US Marine Corps and he served in Afghanistan.

His unit responded to everything from backup requests from other units to dealing with suicide bombings.

When I met him in twenty eighteen, he was my coworker advice on the security team.

At first, I just num is the guy who helped organize training sessions for people who were going to go report on dangerous conflict zones, and he'd tell you how to stay safe out there.

But as time went on, even those of us who weren't traveling the war zones realized that we also needed Robbie's help.

The reality is danger can be present in very different ways, and today I would say, actually it's much more conventionally like the online sphere because online harassment incidents are much more common than let's say, like a field incident.

The digital an online world are always there, so and it sounds you could argue that when your digital hygiene isn't up to par, you're sort of unwillingly placing yourself in a vulnerable situation.

Four at ten adults in the US have dealt with some kind of online harassment, and that's debt is from almost a decade ago.

So what do you do when it happens to you or to someone you care about?

And is there a way to prepare for it?

From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast.

This is kill Switch, thisnect I'm Dexter Thomas.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Starr, goodbye.

How would you define online harassment?

I'm I mean, I think we know when we see about generally it's like unwelcome engagement or interactions in the online world that are intended to inflict harm troll in tendidate.

For this episode, we're going to use the phrasing that a human rights organization called pin America uses.

They define online harassment as quote pervasive or severe targeting of an individual or group online through harmful behavior it's kind of a broad definition, but that's because the kinds of things that can happen to you online are pretty varied arranged.

Could be something as general as this individual account comes to pay a lot of attention to my post, so it could almost be something that stalker esque.

Could be someone who's just like a reply guy, you know, someone who's always got something to say all the way, to threats that are intended to essentially force people to stop what they're doing or go offline.

Sometimes it's like bots, farms, people that get paid to harass people.

Online harassment is a very old problem.

It's probably almost as old as the Internet itself.

The first mainstream media use of the word cyberbullying was over two decades ago.

But it looks like it's intensifying.

That statistic that I mentioned in the beginning of the episode that in twenty seventeen, close to half of US adults had experienced some form of online harassment.

When they did the same survey a few years later, the ratios were about the same, but the severity had increased.

There were major percentage increases in people reporting things like physical threats, sexual harassment, in stocking, and in long sustained harassment campaigns.

But regardless of the scale this stuff can affect you in real.

Life, the stress response is very real, right, and like this is I think where people can really underappreciate what the impact of that is.

It could be very destructive.

There are people that like leave industries, and today there are a lot more instances in cases of like young adults not just like going off of social media platforms because they're harassed online or bullied, but like taking permanent measures.

One study of kids age ten to thirteen found that being targeted by cyberbullying was associated with suicidality That includes everything from suicidal thoughts up to actual attempts, with odds more than four times higher.

So the feelings that we get when we're being abused online are very real, and online harassment doesn't always just stay online.

What's always really concerned me is when online harassment shifts over it to docsing and people's addresses are posted, or you know, someone takes a photo or shows a Google Maps like street photo of their home.

It's very very unsettling because you could have someone that's initially like I hate you, you suck, and then it could be like you deserve to be harmed, you know, all the way to Like I've done research on you.

I know where you live, I know who your family members are, I know you frequent these spaces, so like I know where you go to school, I know where you go to work, I know where you like to hang out.

Yeah, that's when it gets really scary.

Yeah, but also that sort of thing is getting easier to do.

Like, if I wanted to find where somebody lived, say even five years ago, I think it was a little bit more difficult and I need a little bit more technical skill.

It's easier to do that now, which is to say that I actually don't need as much motivation as I used to have to have in order to find somebody's information and dox them or send them a bunch of messages.

Yeah, Like a simple backdrop of like the window that looks out of your apartment building could be just an easy way to like get a general guess as to where you live.

Right now, You've also got AI tools and such that also make these things much easier today.

Yeah, totally right.

I mean you could get a picture of somebody and there's a window in the background.

You could ask Chad JBT, Hey where is this probably and you know it'll give you a few guesses, and the guesses might be correct.

Also, like the reality, I don't want to fear monger about this topic itself.

Most instances of online harassment are you know, typically what you're going to see is an uptick for a couple of days of harassment and generally tends to die down.

Most cases of online harassment don't shift into physical risk.

But some of it does.

In one survey, four percent of Americans say that they've been personally docked, and sixteen percent know a friend or family member who's been docked.

Docing used to feel like this fringe thing, but now it's just something that some people do when they don't like someone's opinion, and it's becoming more common for these things to be organized.

After Charlie Kirk was killed, an anonymous website popped up called Exposed Charlie's Murderers that ask people to submit personal information of anyone that they thought wasn't being respectful enough about Charlie Kirk.

The possible implication here is that, hey, you don't have to do anything with that information, but if someone else with a hotter temper happens to see it and they live nearby that address, Well, not your problem.

Vice President Jady Vance did a guest spot on Charlie Kirk's podcast, and well, he didn't exactly condemn the idea of using someone's personal information to punish them for an opinion that he didn't like.

So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell, call their employer.

We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.

Again, doxing is like an informal ad hoc collaboration with strangers that can lead to potential violence.

One guy puts the information out there, and then someone else takes that information and does whatever the first guy didn't have the nerve to do.

Like swatting.

Alarming warning from the FBI this afternoon about the emerging crime of swatting.

A swatting incident is when someone targets of the by making a nine to one one call falsely claiming there's an emergency at the victim's home, and the medicine can be dangerous.

The FBI and some former federal investigators warn this is a danger to neighborhoods when there are swattings if something goes wrong, when a false call is made and swat teams show up at somebody's door unknown to that person.

In fact, one former FBI agent told CBS News, it could turn deadly.

Swatting unfortunately, has been common going back well over a decade, so some police departments are better prepared for these fake calls, but not all of them.

So doxing harassment.

These are not new concepts, but something that is new in this equation is AI.

Just like it can make mundane tasks like sorting files or writing emails easier, AI can make harassing people a lot easier than it's ever been.

They're like certain ways that AI can be used that are really important to consider, like deep fakes, some things of the type AI tool that take someone's face I like superimpose it onto like an inappropriate picture or something.

One trend that I would say can be in line with online harassments, like online extortion specifically used to target children and young adults.

Were like scam centers that essentially look someone up, find either are an embarrassing photo of someone, or take a photo of someone superimposed it make it look like something else, and then they reach out and say, hey, I have this really embarrassing thing about you, or I hijacked your account and found these personal photos or something of the sort.

I'm gonna post them online unless you give me x amount of money.

Deep fake revenge porn has been a problem for years, and for a long time there was no real legal recourse to address it in the US.

So some things are changing.

Just this past May, a new law now requires platforms to take down non consensual intimate images, whether they're real or AI generated, if the person in them request it.

But there's limitations here.

That law can't necessarily do much about deep fakes hosted on a service that's outside of the US, or prevent people from, say, sending deep fake nude pictures of you to your friends to harass you faster than the services can take them down.

I would say I've lost faith and social media platforms being able to actually protect people.

Social media platforms, i would argue, are there to make money off of us, you know, learn about our habits and sell that information to advertisers.

Right Like, it's a business at the end of the day.

So if you can't really rely on platforms or the law, what can you do if someone is harassing you online, that's after the break.

Let's say you wake up, look at your phone, you see all these notifications, and you realize there's a bunch of people harassing you.

What do you do?

So first and foremost, take a breath, right, like take a moment.

Am I safe?

Am I good?

Right now?

Because like, online harassment isn't just digital right like immediately once you're being attacked, once someone is holding a magnifying glass to you, it's also like mentally very taxing and can be extremely draining.

So it's important to like try and pace yourself as much as we're immediately going to go in the sort of fight flight or freeze responses, be mindful that this has a mental impact on you.

But when it comes to like okay, I'm seeing these messages, I don't know what's happening, what's going on?

The first thing I would personally do is like get a read on the situation.

So that's like going online to see the types of messages you got, getting a sense of how sort of large spans is this just on like my install, my snapchat, my TikTok, or is it all the weight in my work?

Professional accounts, are loved ones being impacted.

You could, on one hand, just be dealing with like a post or something that blows up, goes viral all the way to I'm getting emails that are saying my account is like open on another browser or laptop or phone.

So yeah, Initially, what you want to do is like get a sense of how big the footprint of the harassment is, and then through that, obviously you should be able to also get a sense of are these people that are just disagreeing with me?

Are they just trying to sort of insult me, make me feel bad?

Or is there like anything in there that is truly concerning, right, like we talked about with docsing And then along with that, right, like, I think some things you have to consider.

You know, am I going to put my phone on silent?

It's like blowing up nonstoff?

Do I need to lie low?

Do I need to stop posting online if there's a lot more attention on me all of a sudden?

Do I need to lock down my personal accounts that might have just been compromised.

Are authorities helpful in this situation?

Are they going to make things worse?

So step one is the step back remember when I said that my friend had told me that it's all over the internet.

I had not seen any of this stuff because the two of us run in very different online circles.

It was not all over the internet, but for them it was.

And this is the same thing with anyone else who's ever experienced this that I've talked to about this.

It really does feel like everyone in the world is focused on you, like you can't even go outside.

This isn't you being irrational?

I mean, yes, of course, there is a logical difference in danger between you sitting on the couch and getting a bunch of angry messages and you sitting on the couch and somebody walks in with a knife.

But your brain might interpret both as Yo, someone just entered your space and you are now in danger.

So those feelings are not fake, they're real and we should respect them.

But realistically, if you can take a breath in that moment, it is only a very tiny corner of the Internet that is interested in you, and it is almost certainly temporary.

Sometimes it feels like you have to be glued to your phone, watching every comment, every message as it comes in.

But maybe walking away for a bit might help.

Typically you'd want to do that after you make sure like you changed your passwords or like you checked and make sure like you're not docs.

It's just people being mean, So like maybe then you take a breather, go spend time with friends.

From the sort of mental health like mental hygiene perspective, endless doom scrolling is not necessarily good for us, and especially not the type of constant oh what's being said about me now?

That type of thing.

One thing that I would also especially recommend when you see these types of things is I think there's always like an instinct to just delete, delete, you know, like get rid of it clear at all.

But the issue with that is that you're not then able to sort of monitor or get a sense of the way things are changing.

And then also, like from a legal perspective over holding people accountable, it's also important so like not get rid of that information.

So don't just like delete everything all of a sudden, because sometimes there's really like important information in there that you might overlook.

There are ways that you can also limit the chat or and the notifications and things like that, and like there are ways that you could set filters or restrictions some platforms have privacy settings that allow you to either block, which is like completely out of sight muting meaning like you don't constantly get notifications, or even then like restriction, like some social media platforms have the ability to restrict someone, and you can also set it to where like you can see only if you want to appear in the headspace to see and deal with it.

Shout out to the mute function.

Muting can be really useful.

You can still use Instagram or whatever to talk to your friends without having to see accounts or posts or notifications that are stressing you out.

But in case you do need to go back and show those post to someone, like maybe say, worst case scenario, the police, it's still available.

On Instagram, you can mute a person so that you don't see their posts or their stories.

On Twitter, you can mute accounts or even specific words or hashtags.

Facebook, Blue Sky, TikTok.

Most platforms have similar options just like this.

Beyond the point of like taking a breath, like pacing yourself, like using the resources on people around you and like your family and your loved ones.

You know, online harassment, that type of thing can like feel very embarrassing and so because you're embarrassed, you don't talk about it.

So then when you don't talk about it, you're like isolating yourself.

So yeah, like leaning into your social groups, whether that's like family, loved ones, colleagues.

That statistic that I mentioned at the beginning that almost half of all American adults have experienced some kind of online harassment.

It sounds really bad, but there's actually I think it's silver lining.

It means that you're not alone.

But this is where a lot of people get stuck by self isolating.

It is extremely important to talk to people about what you're going through.

Do not hide this.

People in your life might be able to help you out.

Maybe your boss can let you work from home if you need to, or maybe your friends can monitor your social media for you while you take a quick break from it.

I've had friends that reach out to me because we work in the same industry and they're like, I'm expecting some emails that are really mean and hurtful.

Could you just take a look at these really quickly, or like, could you sit with me while I read through some of these rather than like looking at it alone.

They could sit next to someone and like kind of laugh about it.

You know, and just kind of more so put it in its place.

In that sense, I.

Think a lot of times there's the desire to jump in and respond to people.

What do you think about that?

Yeah, I would say it definitely depends, right, because sometimes especially when you feel like you're overwhelmed by negative comments or people kind of puting a negative light out of context, it is a important to set the record straight, say something.

But it very much depends, right.

I like to say first and foremost like don't feed the trolls, And a lot of instances someone is looking to like get under your skin.

In certain instances, like you're responding is actually encouraging people to harass you a bit more, and online harassment, you're having something harmful or damaging being done to you.

So it's also important to take power.

But like the point I argue is like taking power in the constructive and helpful way rather than just engaging with a troll or something of the sort.

If you're a friend who's watching someone deal with harassment, the same thing applies.

It might not be helpful to try to argue in the comments on someone's behalf, and it actually might be dangerous for you to do that.

Really you can just ask the person, hey, yo, is there anything I can do for you?

And it might be to just go over and hang out or bring them dinner.

I mean, seriously, it sounds kind of touchy feely, but if you want to fight back against the keyboard warriors, one of your best weapons is probably a well placed pizza order.

So those are some concrete steps you can take if you're dealing with some sudden hate comments or some hate mail, But the best thing you can do to protect yourself happens way before the harassment ever starts.

One of the most important things I like the best way to deal with online harassment is by initially preparing for it, so like you can kind of front load a lot of the work, and then ultimately when it does come to harassment, you shut it up.

You're kind of ready for it.

You've established and set yourself in a way where when it comes to the range of what the actual level of disruption is like, it's going to be minimal.

We'll get into how to do that after the break.

If somebody has ten minutes to do something that could help lessen the damage.

If somebody does decide to bother them in the future, what could they do?

What would you say?

The first thing to do is take.

A look at the privacy settings on your social media profiles and set them in a way where you have a little bit more control of like who follows you, who can tag you, who can comment on your posts, and things of that type.

That's a very easy one, you know, look at the settings for messaging.

Is my phone number readily shared?

If you pull up my profile, can anyone dm me?

Or like, do I have to approve it?

You know, like that type of thing.

And so that way you can kind of cut out a lot of noise or reduce like what someone can actually do to like your social media platforms.

Social media apps don't exactly optimize for you protecting your account.

I mean why would they.

If you did, then it could reduce how many people you interact with, and that could potentially mean less time spent on their app.

So they don't always make these settings as easy to find as they probably could.

But in general, there are a lot of settings that you can use to give you more granular control over who can do what with your information, and they're usually pretty easy to manage once you find them.

Seriously, you can do all this stuff on your phone right now as you listen to the rest of this episode, you can probably figure it out on your own, but also put some links in the show notes that'll walk you through securing an account for Instagram, for TikTok and so on.

Just by toggling that switch in your privacy settings, you already made yourself like a non target for a scammer.

You know, you talk about the ten seconds.

Something that takes one second could be the difference between like you being targeted or not, because like a criminal or a harasser is always kind of looking for the easiest target or low hanging fruit.

Maybe the best way to do this is just for a second, pretend that you are the aps put yourself in the mind of someone who wants to find you or hurt you.

How would you go about it?

Imagine going to your social media profile and like look at it from the perspective of someone who might harass you and being like, is there anything that people can see here use here that could be like used against me.

Googling yourself, Yeah, I've heard this advice is like google yourself, see what you can find on just public services, and if you can find your own phone number, maybe there's something you can do about that.

Yeah, And I think that really can vary because like, for example, in the US, privacy laws are really terrible.

Like you could you know, if you registered to vote, there's probably an address for you out there right like on a phone number that was like scraped offline, where like if you live in Europe or somewhere else, like it might be more difficult to get that information.

And so yeah, it's almost like a self doxing exercise looking at it from the perspective of when people look me up, how can they find me?

What can they see about me?

What do you think about the services that will go and delete your information from those kind of online repositories of collections of information.

I mean, especially if you work in an industry where you're prone to have like on you, I would highly recommend considering some of those services.

There's a lot of these services.

There's delete me, Optoy, and Cognitive basically services that will remove your personal data for you from these databases that includes stuff like your address, your email, your phone number, all that stuff that might be floating out there online.

These services do cost money, but one thing you could try is asking your employer if they'll pay for it for you, and if they don't, I mean send them the episode and make the case that maybe they should.

A lot of Like what the things that services like delete me does are things you can do for free to make it more accessible.

If you can't dishot one hundred dollars, you could request that information take an offline, but it's like you have to do it individually.

It just takes a lot more work.

And look, I get it.

Maybe your boss doesn't want to play ball, or maybe money's just tight, or you want to go the DIY route.

So I'll put a link in the show notes to the site that the Freedom of the Press Foundation put together.

It's called you can't make this up.

It's called the Big Ass Data Broker opt Out List, and it will show you how to send those takedown requests on your own.

You can also go through old social media posts and delete anything with personal information, like let's say you once posted something about moving into your new apartment, or god forbid those pictures that people keep posting holding their keys outside in front of the house that they just bought, please do not do that.

That is prime doxing material.

And there's absolutely no reason to keep that online.

And if you use Twitter, and let's say you don't want to have somebody dig something up you said about Trump back in twenty sixteen, you can use the advantagd search feature and look for keywords or a past guest of the show, Michael Lee, help make this tool called cyd dot Social that will go back through your old tweets and help you decide what you want to take down.

And in the future you can just be a little bit more discerning about what you share online.

It is okay to lie to the computer.

So for example, that field in your social media account where it tells you to put your location live, like, I don't use Twitter anymore, but if you look at my account, it says that I'm in Tokyo right now, and just between me and you, I'm not in Tokyo right now.

A lot of it is just like creating the habits to make it harder or prayer to be a target or like less vulnerable.

So like being much more mindful about posting about loved ones.

You know, am I posting anything that like directly shows where I live or like places I like to hang out or spend time out Pretty routinely.

If you do want to post them chair something online, just remember that like when you post the chair something, it's ultimately like always.

There nobody's telling you that you can't post stuff online if you really want to.

There's always the option of making a fensta, a fake Instagram account or TikTok account or whatever, basically making another account on any app aside from the one that is more public facing, and on that one you can be a little bit more personal and you can only give that account out to family and close friends, and this separation can extend beyond social media.

You can even make a Google Voice number or any other type of like service where you can get a free digital number that you can sort of proverbally like plug and unplug.

So that way, like if you do get her ass and you need some like quiets on, you can do that.

I do this.

I have a normal number for friends and family, and I have another number that I give out for work use.

And there's free services for stuff like this, like Google Voice is probably the most common.

Also, you don't have to have two physical phones.

Whichever number someone calls, they both go to my same phone.

And the cool thing about this is if I need to deactivate that public number for a while, I can do that, or if it really got bad, I just throw it out and get a new one.

And if you really want to get secure, you can use signal and turn on the option to hide your phone number.

So let's talk about passwords and things like that.

What do you recommend people do.

Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, go to kill switches.

Episode on password managers.

No, like, seriously though, like a password manager is really great, not way like your accounts are more locked down.

If you want to check out our episode about that, there's a link in the show notes for that one, but here's a short version.

First, make sure that your email account has a good password that isn't used in any other log in, and then also get a password manager, and some of those can be free.

On top of that, whenever you can use two factor authentication or a pass key.

So all this stuff setting up a new account, doxing yourself, deleting all your personal information, and taking back control over the information that is already out there.

It might feel a little bit overwhelming, but you don't have to do all this stuff at once.

Robbie recommends doing it a little bit at a time.

If you could take like five minutes to do one small thing like once a week for a few weeks, you could be really locked down.

In the long term, you don't have to spend an hour, you know, like five hours out of time, just do it little bits, and like that makes it a lot more manageable.

It's way better to like do those things at a leisurely pace where you're not like pressured or stress Like before a situation comes up, you do it in little bits.

Let's say it hits the fan, right like you're gonna be under way more stress and pressure.

You might already have information that's been compromised, and now all of a sudden, not only are you trying to like get the basics done, but then like do way more to like keep an eye on what the harassment looks like.

So it's like way way more work to do.

It's better to like do some of that stuff very naturally over time at your own pace, and then also just like have have a plan, like think about when I'm under stress, like what is it that I can do to take care of myself on an individual level?

And like who can I reach out to if a problem comes up?

All the things that I mentioned this episode, all those tools, all those guides, they're in the show notes, in the description.

But if you just look at one, I'm just gonna tell you this Online Harassment Field Manual dot pin dot org.

I mta say it one more time.

Online Harassment Field Manual dot pin dot org.

That site has a lot more guys that can work for just about everyone in just about every situation.

You can imagine, whether you're being targeted right now or you're worried about it happening to you or someone else in the future.

And it covers all the stuff that we've covered and a lot more.

Most people don't have to take, like you know, one hundred percent def con, I'm gonna lock everything down.

You're not gonna be able to reach me.

Most people don't need that.

But I think you just have to think about, like for yourself, are you more vulnerable because of the work you do, who you are?

If?

It's very assuring, so many people have dealt with this type of thing before, and like most people get through it just fine.

For anyone that's harassed, like know that you're not alone, like a lot of people are really to step in and support you.

And not judge you, so it's like critical that you don't isolate yourself.

Shout out to ROMI, shout out to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and shout out to everyone who's put out materials to help us be safer online.

Just enter everyday lives and Happy New Year.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of kill Switch.

You want to talk to us, you can email us at kill switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC, or we're also on Instagram at kill switch pod.

If you dug this one, and hopefully you did wherever you're listening to these podcasts, you know, leave us a review.

It helps other people find the show, which in turn helps us keep doing our thing.

Kill Switch is hosted by Me Dexter Thomas.

It's produced by Shena Ozaki, dar Luck Potts and Julia Nutter.

Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixed the show from Kaleidoscope.

Our executive producers are oswaalachin I Guess How to Get Tour and Kate Osborne from iHeart are executive producers of Katrina Norville and Nikki e Tour.

Catch on the next one

Goodbye,