Doxing: A Literature Review

The word “doxing” (sometimes “doxxing”) is made up of the words “dropping dox” whereby dox, an abbreviation of the word “document”, refers to personal information (Strandell, 2024). Doxing, or revealing personal information in the online public space with the general intent of causing harm, is increasingly being used in modern armed conflicts. For example, Ukraine’s military has released private information of over 100,000 Russian soldiers, including alleged war criminals and FSB officials, in multiple doxing campaigns (Jensen and Watts, 2022). On the other hand, hackers from Russian hacker group RaHDit have published data on more than 3,000 Ukrainian Armed Forces mercenaries (Rossa Primavera, 27 July 2024), in addition to leaking information on 7,700 Azov soldiers (Al Mayadeen, 28 August 2024). Another group of Russian hackers, EvilWeb, leaked data from Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), including IP addresses, emails, and encryption keys of SBU employees (URA, 29 September 2024). Finally, members of the Russian hacker project “NemeZida” revealed the identities of 800 Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers who participated in the attack on the Kursk region, including representatives of the 82nd Airborne Assault Brigade, the 61st Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as well as about 200 foreign mercenaries from Israel, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Syria (URA, 29 September 2024).

In a non-conflict environment, doxing may serve the purpose of extorting, silencing, controlling, or serving the public interest (Snyder 2017, p. 438; Anderson 2021, pp. 208-9; Li 2023, p. 368). In short, the role of doxing in today’s strategies to gain or retain power over enemy actors or rival factions is prominent and more relevant than ever before. This raises questions over the nature and legitimacy of doxing, including what (and who) exactly is that doxing involves, what makes a particular case of doxing ethically acceptable, or whether the practice should be seen as a crime or as a means for anti-repression activism.

In order to shed light upon such questions, this literature review provides findings on academic discussions around doxing, from its conceptual or theoretical understanding to its real-life forms and implications. It does so by assessing a total of 17 peer-reviewed research papers published in the time span of 10 years (2014-2024). The contributions include approaches to the subject by scholars from the Social Sciences, the Data Sciences, and Public Health, located across North America, Europe, and Asia. Selecting the material involved open-source methodology (OSINT), with keywords including both scholarly and culturally sensitive vocabulary, especially in relation to state surveillance and the misuse of data sharing. For example, “dox” AND “antidox”, “doxing” AND “legal”, “doxing” AND “vigilantism”, or “doxing” OR “doxed” AND “security” as well as “doxing” AND “malicious” retrieved relevant sources. Due to part of the academic discussion on doxing being morality-based, namely whether it is “good” or “bad”, which is an inherently subjective assessment, research contributions were not disregarded based on their moral assessment, thereby allowing for this review to be nuanced and whole-encompassing.

As a way to complement scholarly contributions with some preliminary data on the subject of doxing, the discussion following the literature summary includes data from semi-structured interviews with individuals who have been, or are, victims of doxing. In particular, such conversations took place with combatants, humanitarian workers, and journalists active in conflict zones, specifically in Ukraine. The incorporation of real and direct testimonies to doxing allows for a more nuanced grasp of the nature and impact of the practice, and helps fill out some gaps found in the literature, namely state-sponsored and/or state-supported doxing in the context of war. Indeed, among the existing literature, the only scholars that address the subject of doxing and conflict are Jensen and Watts from Brigham Young University and the United States Military Academy, respectively. While their work illustrates the use of doxing on enemy soldiers, it doesso focusing solely on Ukraine’s current tactics against Russian soldiers. This analysis contributes to such work by adding evidence on pro-Russia combatants’ doxing tactics against pro-Ukraine individuals in the area and abroad.

This literature review contains a summary of findings, which includes a chronological content analysis of the scholarly contributions to the subject together with data from the above-mentioned interviews. Such an analysis is followed by a brief discussion, designed to stress points of agreement and disagreement between the authors, namely around conceptual approaches to doxing, its ethical use, and its legality. It ends with a conclusion section synthesising the results of the literature review and highlighting where our project, “Anti-Dox: Identifying, Evaluating, and Countering Disinformation in Times of War”, hopes to contribute to current debates on the subject. Ultimately, this analysis aims to situate the project into an evidence-based conversation in which doxing is considered a form of harmful information spread, characterised by actors employing manipulation tactics to advance political, military, or commercial goals