So You Think It's Safe to Share Your Real Identity on Fetlife

If you ever become the target of online abuse, people will tell you it’s just the internet. This is a war against pixels, so you can just log off and get back to your white picket fence and daisies. The worst of internet toxicity is picking up a stalker who follows your internet trail with their teeny pixilated eyes. That’s what they say. It’s not that bad.

If that’s your impression, you’re not really grasping how bad online harassment can get.

Digital contempt crawls offline in unexpected ways. Three of Gamergate’s victims had to move out of their homes when identifying details were released on high-traffic sites. The internet has more than its share of abusive people hunting for strangers to terrorise, so Zoe Quinn’s attack went on for years. If the first group of criminals got bored, there were plenty of others willing to pick up the cause. The movement has 10, 000 supporters, so their abuse continues years later, and they won’t be running out of steam anytime soon.

People who’d threatened to kill Quinn had her home address. How easy do you think it is to log out of those murder threats now? They sent revenge porn to her father, and her voicemail was hacked.

How easy is it now?

Her trash was scoured for anything that might get her jailed.

Still easy?

Another target, Anita Sarkeesian, had to flee her home and cancel a speaking appearance on the back of three death threats. The latter eventually rose to 45. The mob made fraudulent emergency services reports that triggered a SWAT team response to two other victims’ homes—and these frequently end in shootings. The mob also convinced advertisers to pull out of deals with other targets.

“The threat is clear: We can get to you. We can hurt you. We don't stop.” – Ben Kuchera

Logging off is as effective as closing your eyes in the hope that murderous people can no longer see you. On Fetlife, doxing can also bring an entirely new threat: You can lose your job and custody of your children. You’re also wide open to revenge porn—and that’s well-nigh impossible to scrub off the internet.

Doxing has become the norm on social networks. Hell, even Gawker doxed someone, and the most common reason cited for doxing is “justice”. In other words most doxers have a “cause”, so even the morality of your acquaintances won’t keep you safe.

Over the last few months, I’ve been looking into taking legal action against an online stalker. The police in his country wouldn’t act because I was not a citizen. The police in my country wouldn’t act because my stalker was not a citizen. If you have grand ideas of simply calling the police, put them to bed now. Prosecuting a cross-border online crime is challenging and expensive.

It’s best to think of the internet as the wild west. If someone decides to target you, you have very little recourse beyond the support of the sites you use. There is one thing you can do, though:

Keep your identity offline because they can get to you. They can hurt you. They don't stop.