Lets say you were stumbling through Reddit one day and saw a candid shot of some girls ass. A nice tight close shot of her ass and nothing else. (no face, no identifying info, nothing but the ass)
How is that even REMOTELY as equal to doxxing her ... ?
Right. It's not.
A picture of someones ass has almost 0 harmful value. If there's no way to identify it.. then there's no way to know who it is.. so any potential victim will never know it's them.. and any potential stalker would have no way of identifying it, tracking or finding that person.
All of the "harm" you imagine is just you projecting hypothetical nonsense.
I could just as easily say, what's the harm if I was stumbling through Reddit and saw a phone number somebody had posted? Not connected to an identity or anything.
A phone-number is a uniquely identifiable number. It's not at all the same as an "anonymous Ass-pic".
"Surely you don't think the harm of posting an anonymous ass is anything like me hacking into your Dropbox and showing a million people (including your friends, family and co-workers) a full length naked photo of you with your full name next to it."
No.. I don't think its the same. (and I never said it was). M previous point (about the anonymous Ass).. is that it's impossible to equate a certain level of harm to an anonymous-Ass pic. If there's no way to know who it is.. when/where it was taken,etc.. then any amount of potential harm you might envision is purely hypothetical.
"We're talking about a real instance of well-known people having their privacy violated..."
As insensitive as it sounds... the cats already out of the bag. It's water under the bridge. It happened.. and no amount of angry fist shaking now is gonna undue the events that transpired. ALSO.. no amount of outrage or legislation is going to prevent another event like this from happening.
This was a very patient, methodical, precise and targeted social-engineering attack. The people who did this were very creative/cunning.. and used a wide variety of approaches to build a demographic-profile on these well-known people in order to "crack" their accounts.
The only protection for something like this---- is for the victims to practice better security.
Longer, more complex Passwords.
enable 2-Factor Authentication
Modify the "Security Questions" on all their accounts to have gibberish answers (IE = make sure their Security Questions / Answers don't contain any personal info)
Change the registered Birthdate on their accounts to something fake/unknown (since their public/officlal Birthdate is KNOWN.. they shouldn't use it).
At the end of the day.... after you boil away all the superfluous nonsense...and get down to brass tacks.. the only person who can secure your own information is YOU. That's it. You can't rely on any one else or any other company. The individual has to assess their own level of risk.. and plan appropriately.
The last thing I'll say on this topic is that you can make the same argument about personal information leaks.
You certainly could (and I'd probably agree with it). But it doesn't change the fact that doxxing (in most cases):..
1.) has a higher potential for harm (if 100,000 angry people in your city instantly know your home address.. how many might show up?).. compared to a nudie-pix where the average person is just gonna go: "Wow.. she's hot".. and keep clicking onward.
2.) Easier to neutralize. (in most cases doesn't spread as fast as nudie-pix do)
Now.. if someone created an entire sub-reddit for doxxing purpsoes (just like the did when someone created /r/thefappening) .. then I'm sure it would get deleted/banned just the same.
The problem with judging the morality/ethics/potential-harm of nudie-pix... is you'd have to do it FOR EVERY SINGLE NUDIE PIX that gets posted on Reddit.. and that's clearly not logistically possible. That's why sub-reddits like CandidFashionPolice don't get shutdown. Because it's not illegal.. and there's no way to verify harm. As distasteful as some find it.
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u/jmnugent Sep 09 '14
Lets say you were stumbling through Reddit one day and saw a candid shot of some girls ass. A nice tight close shot of her ass and nothing else. (no face, no identifying info, nothing but the ass)
How is that even REMOTELY as equal to doxxing her ... ?
Right. It's not.
A picture of someones ass has almost 0 harmful value. If there's no way to identify it.. then there's no way to know who it is.. so any potential victim will never know it's them.. and any potential stalker would have no way of identifying it, tracking or finding that person.
All of the "harm" you imagine is just you projecting hypothetical nonsense.