Reporters Without Borders (RSF) designed this series of exercises aimed at preventing doxxing, which consists of exposing someone’s private information for harassment purposes. The second exercise aims to identify locations of one’s sensitive information through advanced search engine techniques.
A doxxer would begin their search with publicly known information, especially if, as a journalist, you have a public profile through which you share your work online. Although a single name, email, or phone number might not cause an imminent privacy concern, they might be a stepping stone to tracking down online spaces that store more sensitive personal information.
Often, the first place to look for personal information is through search engines. This exercise uses the most commonly used search engine Google, but the process and operators presented also work in other search engines such as Duck Duck Go or Yandex.
Objective: To discover through search engine techniques what personal information is already easily accessible to a stranger online, and where that information is located.
Time: 30 mins
Process: In this exercise, use Google to search for your name, phone numbers, email using advanced search operators as explained in the table below. Examples are included at the bottom. To imitate a doxxer, browse in incognito mode so that your search history does not influence the results of this exercise. If your search includes special characters such as accents, try with and without them (e.g. “Léa / Lea”).
Google Search Operators |
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| Operator | What it searches | Example |
| Site | Provides results of pages located on a specific domain | site:linkedin.com |
| AND/OR | Use the AND operator to return results containing two results. Use the OR operator to return results that contain one result or the other result. | “John Smith” AND (Portland OR Salem) |
| Asterisk | Google treats the asterisk as a placeholder for one or few words in a search string. | “John * Smith” would look for “John Addam Smith” or “John the King Smith” |
| Hyphen | This operator allows you to exclude the text immediately following it. | “John Smith” -site:yournewssite.com |
| Filetype
+ Intext |
Filter search results by a single file type extension
Common File Types:
The operator intext: will return search results from within the text of a file. |
filetype:xls intext:you@youremail.com |
| Quotation marks | Quotation marks around a term will return search results containing that term verbatim. | “John Smith the cat” will exclude results that only contain John Smith or cats |
Table credits: The New York Times’ open-source training material
Examples
- John Smith AND city OR country; site:yourorganisation.com; John Smith:filetype:pdf
- JohnSmith@gmail.com; filetype:pdf intext:JohnSmith@gmail.com
- phone number: yourorganisation.com; “contact” AND phone number
Use these operators in different combinations, and include other personal information in the searches as needed. If you have completed the first exercise in prioritising the information you are trying to protect, then you can make Google searches accordingly. For instance, if you would like to keep hidden forum posts by your younger self, target your Google search with specific keywords located on a specific domain.
← Read Part 1: Define the perimeter of your online privacy
→ Read Part 3: How much of your private life can be found on social media?
→ Read Part 4: How to protect yourself from doxxing
