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It’s against Twitter’s TOS for one. “Sharing someone’s private information online without their permission, sometimes called doxxing, is a breach of their priv

It’s against Twitter’s TOS for one. “Sharing someone’s private information online without their permission, sometimes called doxxing, is a breach of their privacy and of the Twitter Rules. Sharing private information can pose serious safety and security risks for those affected and can lead to physical, emotional, and financial hardship.”

tptacek 7y ago
No, it's not: Twitter is explicit about the types of information that cannot be shared, and Krebs didn't share those things. Twitter also explicitly exempts information available from public sources. A public LinkedIn profile certainly fits that exemption.
- grandmczeb 7y ago
  “How’s the weather in <blank>?” is not sharing a name and is most certainly covered (“we consider information like physical location to be a higher risk than other types of information.”) Even if the information is public, the policy also calls out intent as a factor and he was obviously sharing it in an attempt to intimidate them. Not to mention, according to his tweet it took him 6 hours to uncover; I think it’s debatable how “public” that makes it.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    If he can point to a public source, it doesn't matter how long it took him to identify that source. If the city someone lives in is on their public LinkedIn profile, it's not secret. If you ask me how the weather is in Chicago, or even in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, you're not violating Twitter's rules.
    - grandmczeb 7y ago
      People are regularly banned for posting journalists’ home addresses under the doxxing policy even if it’s available other places online (for good reason.) Again, even if it’s public information the intent also matters.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        Brian Krebs does not appear to have posted Vincent Canfield and Jake Williams home addresses.
        grandmczeb 7y ago
        But he does appear to have posted personal information in an attempt to intimidate them. Even if you don’t want to call that doxxing, can we at least agree that’s not a very nice thing to do?
        GordonS 7y ago
        And Krebs still hasn't apologised for his childish behaviour, or even so much as commented in it - he's just sticking his head in the sand, hoping it's eventually forgotten about. I've stopped reading his blog and tweets, and he went way, way, way down in estimation after this.
        tptacek 7y ago
        What obligation did Krebs have to be nice to these people? Were they sources of his? Did he have a prior relationship with them? We can stipulate a bunch of scenarios in which Krebs would have been obligated not to publish Canfield's name, but it is not a general principle that he is enjoined from doing so; you have to identify the specific relationship that creates the obligation. Sometimes those relationships are quite broad! For instance: on HN, it is generally verboten to out people. That's a rule we've adopted to maintain civil discourse on the site, and something we agree to when we decide to participate here. But HN has lots of rules that are not in fact rules in the real world; for instance, 'pvg regularly chides 'dang for enforcing the HN's idiosyncratic (but good) rule about not putting quotation marks around paraphrases of other people's comments. Does any such circumstance apply here? The professional ethics rules of journalism have more the opposite directionality, cautioning journalists against maintaining anonymity of sources to the detriment of the readership.
        grandmczeb 7y ago
oh_sigh 7y ago
Is saying 'Anonymous account X is operated by non-anonymous account Y' doxxing?
- tptacek 7y ago
  Not by Twitter's definition.

tptacek 7y ago

No, it's not: Twitter is explicit about the types of information that cannot be shared, and Krebs didn't share those things. Twitter also explicitly exempts information available from public sources. A public LinkedIn profile certainly fits that exemption.

grandmczeb 7y ago
“How’s the weather in <blank>?” is not sharing a name and is most certainly covered (“we consider information like physical location to be a higher risk than other types of information.”) Even if the information is public, the policy also calls out intent as a factor and he was obviously sharing it in an attempt to intimidate them. Not to mention, according to his tweet it took him 6 hours to uncover; I think it’s debatable how “public” that makes it.
- tptacek 7y ago
  If he can point to a public source, it doesn't matter how long it took him to identify that source. If the city someone lives in is on their public LinkedIn profile, it's not secret. If you ask me how the weather is in Chicago, or even in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, you're not violating Twitter's rules.
  - grandmczeb 7y ago
    People are regularly banned for posting journalists’ home addresses under the doxxing policy even if it’s available other places online (for good reason.) Again, even if it’s public information the intent also matters.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Brian Krebs does not appear to have posted Vincent Canfield and Jake Williams home addresses.
      - grandmczeb 7y ago
        But he does appear to have posted personal information in an attempt to intimidate them. Even if you don’t want to call that doxxing, can we at least agree that’s not a very nice thing to do?
        GordonS 7y ago
        And Krebs still hasn't apologised for his childish behaviour, or even so much as commented in it - he's just sticking his head in the sand, hoping it's eventually forgotten about. I've stopped reading his blog and tweets, and he went way, way, way down in estimation after this.
        tptacek 7y ago
        What obligation did Krebs have to be nice to these people? Were they sources of his? Did he have a prior relationship with them? We can stipulate a bunch of scenarios in which Krebs would have been obligated not to publish Canfield's name, but it is not a general principle that he is enjoined from doing so; you have to identify the specific relationship that creates the obligation. Sometimes those relationships are quite broad! For instance: on HN, it is generally verboten to out people. That's a rule we've adopted to maintain civil discourse on the site, and something we agree to when we decide to participate here. But HN has lots of rules that are not in fact rules in the real world; for instance, 'pvg regularly chides 'dang for enforcing the HN's idiosyncratic (but good) rule about not putting quotation marks around paraphrases of other people's comments. Does any such circumstance apply here? The professional ethics rules of journalism have more the opposite directionality, cautioning journalists against maintaining anonymity of sources to the detriment of the readership.
        grandmczeb 7y ago

oh_sigh 7y ago

Is saying 'Anonymous account X is operated by non-anonymous account Y' doxxing?

tptacek 7y ago
Not by Twitter's definition.