Find out what does it mean to dox someone in Tiktok. Have you ever wondered what it means to dox someone on TikTok? We explain what the practice is and how to avoid it.
The accumulation of new terms in the world of the Internet and social networks can be overwhelming, and now thousands of users are wondering what it means to dox someone on TikTok. In this article we will explain what this term, whose origin comes from the world of cybersecurity specialists, is all about.
What Is Doxing
Before focusing on the particularity of TikTok, we have to specify what doxing is. This term comes from English and refers to the exposure of documentation (dox, colloquially). Thus, every time someone does doxing, they are exposing private information with the aim of harming another person.
This practice, which was initially limited exclusively to cybercriminals seeking to expose private information about a person or a company in order to delegitimize it, has become universal with the development of social networks and the massive use of the Internet, so that any individual can be a victim of doxing.
Currently, the most commonly used models of doxing are the disclosure of a person’s personal and/or private information without their consent or the disclosure of public but very previous information of a private person that may be harmful to them. When talking about cancellation culture, doxing techniques are often used to bring to light a person’s very previous publications in order to veto and harm him/her in the present.
The seriousness of doxing (or its illegality if certain rights are violated) may vary according to the type of information disclosed. It is not the same to rescue a public but old video of a user – which after all is still published and available to anyone who wants to search for it – as it is to publish the address or IP address of a person.
One example of doxing was TikTok influencer Koh Boon-ki, who proposed creating a Telegram group targeting female dating app users in Singapore to collect information about the men they dated in a Google Drive document that included the tags ‘blacklist’ and ‘avoid’. Koh deleted the document after its existence transpired and reached the media, but risked a fine of more than €3,000 and even a six-month jail stay for harassment under Singaporean law.
How To Avoid Doxing In Tiktok
There are several measures we can take if we want to know how to avoid doxing on TikTok. In general, it is recommended to use different names on each platform, whether they are social networks or forums, especially if their use is exclusively personal and not professional. This will make it more difficult to collect information about you. The use of secure passwords and the two-factor authentication offered by this social network is also a good practice that will prevent your account from being compromised by cyber attacks.
Other useful tips to avoid being doxed is not to link other accounts to our TikTok profile, either Google, Facebook or any other alternative that the application offers. It is better to create an exclusive profile for TikTok.
By now, almost all of us are aware that we have to avoid displaying personal information (address, account number, etc.) on social networks as much as possible. Similarly, when we get a link that might look suspicious, we should not access it under any circumstances, as phishing attacks can also be behind many cases of doxing.
Private accounts are also much less exposed to this practice than public ones, although very few people want to have their TikTok account limited only to their circle of trusted contacts. If your account is public, the ideal is to take the utmost precautions. The more control we have over the applications we use (privacy settings, personalization, etc.), the more securely we can use our social networks.