January 7, 2026 • 33 mins
Journalists, public figures, and just about anyone with an online presence today can suddenly face harassment: ranging from nasty posts and replies to real life threats like doxxing. Dexter talks with Ramy Ghaly, a security professional, about how online harassment has gotten worse, how to respond if it happens to you, and what you can do, right now, to prepare and protect yourself.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read:
- Pen America’s Online Harassment Field Manual: https://onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
A little while back, I called one of my friends
up just to say hey, and when they picked up,
I could tell they were freaking out, like their voice
was shaking, And I asked what was wrong and they said, oh,
I thought you called me because you saw And I
said saw, what? What are you talking about? And they said, well,
it's all over the internet have you seen it? And
I still didn't get it. So it turns out this
(00:31):
friend of mine had posted a TikTok of themselves talking
about something honestly pretty innocuous, but some small group of
people decided that they didn't like what was being said,
and they were being harassed online. I mean, it was
really bad. The post was full of hate comments, there
were hate messages in the inbox they'd gotten docked, and
someone had found their mother's email address and was sending
(00:53):
the family hate mail. I had no idea this was
going on, and it really bothered me, not just because
people are harassing my friend, but because this was the
third friend that this was happening to that month that
I knew of.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I would say most people do deal with online harassment
and don't necessarily talk about it or share or express it.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Rommy Galley is a security professional, and he's been working
on keeping journalists around the globe safe for over a decade.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It's sort of like an invisible epidemic cooksorce. Everyone is
so accessible today that sometimes things can just blow up
out of proportions, and because you're only experiencing it through
a screen, people aren't actually fully aware of what it
is that you're dealing with, so it's very isolating.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Romi actually started his career as a combat medic in
the US Marine Corps and he served in Afghanistan. His
unit responded to everything from backup requests from other units
to dealing with suicide bombings. When I met him in
twenty eighteen, he was my coworker advice on the security team.
At first, I just num is the guy who helped
organize training sessions for people who were going to go
report on dangerous conflict zones, and he'd tell you how
(02:07):
to stay safe out there. But as time went on,
even those of us who weren't traveling the war zones
realized that we also needed Robbie's help.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
The reality is danger can be present in very different ways,
and today I would say, actually it's much more conventionally
like the online sphere because online harassment incidents are much
more common than let's say, like a field incident. The
digital an online world are always there, so and it
sounds you could argue that when your digital hygiene isn't
(02:36):
up to par, you're sort of unwillingly placing yourself in
a vulnerable situation.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Four at ten adults in the US have dealt with
some kind of online harassment, and that's debt is from
almost a decade ago. So what do you do when
it happens to you or to someone you care about?
And is there a way to prepare for it? From
Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast. This is kill Switch, thisnect I'm
(03:13):
Dexter Thomas.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Starr, goodbye.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
How would you define online harassment?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I'm I mean, I think we know when we see
about generally it's like unwelcome engagement or interactions in the
online world that are intended to inflict harm troll in tendidate.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
For this episode, we're going to use the phrasing that
a human rights organization called pin America uses. They define
online harassment as quote pervasive or severe targeting of an
individual or group online through harmful behavior it's kind of
a broad definition, but that's because the kinds of things
that can happen to you online are pretty varied arranged.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Could be something as general as this individual account comes
to pay a lot of attention to my post, so
it could almost be something that stalker esque. Could be
someone who's just like a reply guy, you know, someone
who's always got something to say all the way, to
threats that are intended to essentially force people to stop
(04:56):
what they're doing or go offline. Sometimes it's like bots, farms,
people that get paid to harass people.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Online harassment is a very old problem. It's probably almost
as old as the Internet itself. The first mainstream media
use of the word cyberbullying was over two decades ago.
But it looks like it's intensifying. That statistic that I
mentioned in the beginning of the episode that in twenty seventeen,
close to half of US adults had experienced some form
(05:24):
of online harassment. When they did the same survey a
few years later, the ratios were about the same, but
the severity had increased. There were major percentage increases in
people reporting things like physical threats, sexual harassment, in stocking,
and in long sustained harassment campaigns. But regardless of the
scale this stuff can affect you in real.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Life, the stress response is very real, right, and like
this is I think where people can really underappreciate what
the impact of that is. It could be very destructive.
There are people that like leave industries, and today there
are a lot more instances in cases of like young
adults not just like going off of social media platforms
(06:08):
because they're harassed online or bullied, but like taking permanent measures.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
One study of kids age ten to thirteen found that
being targeted by cyberbullying was associated with suicidality That includes
everything from suicidal thoughts up to actual attempts, with odds
more than four times higher. So the feelings that we
get when we're being abused online are very real, and
online harassment doesn't always just stay online.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
What's always really concerned me is when online harassment shifts
over it to docsing and people's addresses are posted, or
you know, someone takes a photo or shows a Google
Maps like street photo of their home. It's very very
unsettling because you could have someone that's initially like I
hate you, you suck, and then it could be like
(06:57):
you deserve to be harmed, you know, all the way
to Like I've done research on you. I know where
you live, I know who your family members are, I
know you frequent these spaces, so like I know where
you go to school, I know where you go to work,
I know where you like to hang out.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, that's when it gets really scary. Yeah, but also
that sort of thing is getting easier to do. Like,
if I wanted to find where somebody lived, say even
five years ago, I think it was a little bit
more difficult and I need a little bit more technical skill.
It's easier to do that now, which is to say
that I actually don't need as much motivation as I
(07:37):
used to have to have in order to find somebody's
information and dox them or send them a bunch of messages.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, Like a simple backdrop of like the window that
looks out of your apartment building could be just an
easy way to like get a general guess as to
where you live. Right now, You've also got AI tools
and such that also make these things much easier today.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, totally right. I mean you could get a picture
of somebody and there's a window in the background. You
could ask Chad JBT, Hey where is this probably and
you know it'll give you a few guesses, and the
guesses might be correct.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Also, like the reality, I don't want to fear monger
about this topic itself. Most instances of online harassment are
you know, typically what you're going to see is an
uptick for a couple of days of harassment and generally
tends to die down. Most cases of online harassment don't
shift into physical risk.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
But some of it does. In one survey, four percent
of Americans say that they've been personally docked, and sixteen
percent know a friend or family member who's been docked.
Docing used to feel like this fringe thing, but now
it's just something that some people do when they don't
like someone's opinion, and it's becoming more common for these
things to be organized. After Charlie Kirk was killed, an
(08:53):
anonymous website popped up called Exposed Charlie's Murderers that ask
people to submit personal information of anyone that they thought
wasn't being respectful enough about Charlie Kirk. The possible implication
here is that, hey, you don't have to do anything
with that information, but if someone else with a hotter
temper happens to see it and they live nearby that address, Well,
(09:15):
not your problem. Vice President Jady Vance did a guest
spot on Charlie Kirk's podcast, and well, he didn't exactly
condemn the idea of using someone's personal information to punish
them for an opinion that he didn't like. So when
you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell,
call their employer. We don't believe in political violence, but
(09:35):
we do believe in civility. Again, doxing is like an
informal ad hoc collaboration with strangers that can lead to
potential violence. One guy puts the information out there, and
then someone else takes that information and does whatever the
first guy didn't have the nerve to do. Like swatting.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Alarming warning from the FBI this afternoon about the emerging
crime of swatting. A swatting incident is when someone targets
of the by making a nine to one one call
falsely claiming there's an emergency at the victim's home, and
the medicine can be dangerous.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
The FBI and some former federal investigators warn this is
a danger to neighborhoods when there are swattings if something
goes wrong, when a false call is made and swat
teams show up at somebody's door unknown to that person.
In fact, one former FBI agent told CBS News, it
could turn deadly.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Swatting unfortunately, has been common going back well over a decade,
so some police departments are better prepared for these fake calls,
but not all of them. So doxing harassment. These are
not new concepts, but something that is new in this
equation is AI. Just like it can make mundane tasks
like sorting files or writing emails easier, AI can make
(10:47):
harassing people a lot easier than it's ever been.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
They're like certain ways that AI can be used that
are really important to consider, like deep fakes, some things
of the type AI tool that take someone's face I
like superimpose it onto like an inappropriate picture or something.
One trend that I would say can be in line
with online harassments, like online extortion specifically used to target
(11:14):
children and young adults. Were like scam centers that essentially
look someone up, find either are an embarrassing photo of someone,
or take a photo of someone superimposed it make it
look like something else, and then they reach out and say, hey,
I have this really embarrassing thing about you, or I
hijacked your account and found these personal photos or something
(11:35):
of the sort. I'm gonna post them online unless you
give me x amount of money.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Deep fake revenge porn has been a problem for years,
and for a long time there was no real legal
recourse to address it in the US. So some things
are changing. Just this past May, a new law now
requires platforms to take down non consensual intimate images, whether
they're real or AI generated, if the person in them
request it. But there's limitations here. That law can't necessarily
(12:04):
do much about deep fakes hosted on a service that's
outside of the US, or prevent people from, say, sending
deep fake nude pictures of you to your friends to
harass you faster than the services can take them down.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I would say I've lost faith and social media platforms
being able to actually protect people. Social media platforms, i
would argue, are there to make money off of us,
you know, learn about our habits and sell that information
to advertisers. Right Like, it's a business at the end
of the day.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So if you can't really rely on platforms or the law,
what can you do if someone is harassing you online,
that's after the break. Let's say you wake up, look
(12:57):
at your phone, you see all these notifications, and you
realize there's a bunch of people harassing you. What do
you do?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So first and foremost, take a breath, right, like take
a moment. Am I safe? Am I good? Right now?
Because like, online harassment isn't just digital right like immediately
once you're being attacked, once someone is holding a magnifying
glass to you, it's also like mentally very taxing and
can be extremely draining. So it's important to like try
(13:27):
and pace yourself as much as we're immediately going to
go in the sort of fight flight or freeze responses,
be mindful that this has a mental impact on you.
But when it comes to like okay, I'm seeing these messages,
I don't know what's happening, what's going on? The first
thing I would personally do is like get a read
on the situation. So that's like going online to see
(13:48):
the types of messages you got, getting a sense of
how sort of large spans is this just on like
my install, my snapchat, my TikTok, or is it all
the weight in my work? Professional accounts, are loved ones
being impacted. You could, on one hand, just be dealing
with like a post or something that blows up, goes
(14:09):
viral all the way to I'm getting emails that are
saying my account is like open on another browser or
laptop or phone. So yeah, Initially, what you want to
do is like get a sense of how big the
footprint of the harassment is, and then through that, obviously
you should be able to also get a sense of
are these people that are just disagreeing with me? Are
(14:31):
they just trying to sort of insult me, make me
feel bad? Or is there like anything in there that
is truly concerning, right, like we talked about with docsing
And then along with that, right, like, I think some
things you have to consider. You know, am I going
to put my phone on silent? It's like blowing up nonstoff?
Do I need to lie low? Do I need to
stop posting online if there's a lot more attention on
(14:52):
me all of a sudden? Do I need to lock
down my personal accounts that might have just been compromised.
Are authorities helpful in this situation? Are they going to
make things worse?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So step one is the step back remember when I
said that my friend had told me that it's all
over the internet. I had not seen any of this
stuff because the two of us run in very different
online circles. It was not all over the internet, but
for them it was. And this is the same thing
with anyone else who's ever experienced this that I've talked
(15:23):
to about this. It really does feel like everyone in
the world is focused on you, like you can't even
go outside. This isn't you being irrational? I mean, yes,
of course, there is a logical difference in danger between
you sitting on the couch and getting a bunch of
angry messages and you sitting on the couch and somebody
walks in with a knife. But your brain might interpret
(15:44):
both as Yo, someone just entered your space and you
are now in danger. So those feelings are not fake,
they're real and we should respect them. But realistically, if
you can take a breath in that moment, it is
only a very tiny corner of the Internet that is
interested in you, and it is almost certainly temporary. Sometimes
it feels like you have to be glued to your phone,
(16:06):
watching every comment, every message as it comes in. But
maybe walking away for a bit might help.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Typically you'd want to do that after you make sure
like you changed your passwords or like you checked and
make sure like you're not docs. It's just people being mean,
So like maybe then you take a breather, go spend
time with friends. From the sort of mental health like
mental hygiene perspective, endless doom scrolling is not necessarily good
for us, and especially not the type of constant oh
(16:37):
what's being said about me now? That type of thing.
One thing that I would also especially recommend when you
see these types of things is I think there's always
like an instinct to just delete, delete, you know, like
get rid of it clear at all. But the issue
with that is that you're not then able to sort
of monitor or get a sense of the way things
are changing. And then also, like from a legal perspective
(17:00):
over holding people accountable, it's also important so like not
get rid of that information. So don't just like delete
everything all of a sudden, because sometimes there's really like
important information in there that you might overlook. There are
ways that you can also limit the chat or and
the notifications and things like that, and like there are
(17:20):
ways that you could set filters or restrictions some platforms
have privacy settings that allow you to either block, which
is like completely out of sight muting meaning like you
don't constantly get notifications, or even then like restriction, like
some social media platforms have the ability to restrict someone,
(17:40):
and you can also set it to where like you
can see only if you want to appear in the
headspace to see and deal with it.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Shout out to the mute function. Muting can be really useful.
You can still use Instagram or whatever to talk to
your friends without having to see accounts or posts or
notifications that are stressing you out. But in case you
do need to go back and show those post to someone,
like maybe say, worst case scenario, the police, it's still available.
On Instagram, you can mute a person so that you
(18:07):
don't see their posts or their stories. On Twitter, you
can mute accounts or even specific words or hashtags. Facebook,
Blue Sky, TikTok. Most platforms have similar options just like this.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Beyond the point of like taking a breath, like pacing yourself,
like using the resources on people around you and like
your family and your loved ones. You know, online harassment,
that type of thing can like feel very embarrassing and
so because you're embarrassed, you don't talk about it. So
then when you don't talk about it, you're like isolating yourself.
So yeah, like leaning into your social groups, whether that's
(18:39):
like family, loved ones, colleagues.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
That statistic that I mentioned at the beginning that almost
half of all American adults have experienced some kind of
online harassment. It sounds really bad, but there's actually I
think it's silver lining. It means that you're not alone.
But this is where a lot of people get stuck
by self isolating. It is extremely important to talk to
people about what you're going through. Do not hide this.
(19:05):
People in your life might be able to help you out.
Maybe your boss can let you work from home if
you need to, or maybe your friends can monitor your
social media for you while you take a quick break
from it.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I've had friends that reach out to me because we
work in the same industry and they're like, I'm expecting
some emails that are really mean and hurtful. Could you
just take a look at these really quickly, or like,
could you sit with me while I read through some
of these rather than like looking at it alone. They
could sit next to someone and like kind of laugh
about it. You know, and just kind of more so
(19:37):
put it in its place. In that sense, I.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Think a lot of times there's the desire to jump
in and respond to people. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, I would say it definitely depends, right, because sometimes
especially when you feel like you're overwhelmed by negative comments
or people kind of puting a negative light out of context,
it is a important to set the record straight, say something.
But it very much depends, right. I like to say
first and foremost like don't feed the trolls, And a
(20:09):
lot of instances someone is looking to like get under
your skin. In certain instances, like you're responding is actually
encouraging people to harass you a bit more, and online harassment,
you're having something harmful or damaging being done to you.
So it's also important to take power. But like the
point I argue is like taking power in the constructive
(20:30):
and helpful way rather than just engaging with a troll
or something of the sort.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
If you're a friend who's watching someone deal with harassment,
the same thing applies. It might not be helpful to
try to argue in the comments on someone's behalf, and
it actually might be dangerous for you to do that.
Really you can just ask the person, hey, yo, is
there anything I can do for you? And it might
be to just go over and hang out or bring
them dinner. I mean, seriously, it sounds kind of touchy feely,
(20:57):
but if you want to fight back against the keyboard warriors,
one of your best weapons is probably a well placed
pizza order. So those are some concrete steps you can
take if you're dealing with some sudden hate comments or
some hate mail, But the best thing you can do
to protect yourself happens way before the harassment ever starts.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
One of the most important things I like the best
way to deal with online harassment is by initially preparing
for it, so like you can kind of front load
a lot of the work, and then ultimately when it
does come to harassment, you shut it up. You're kind
of ready for it. You've established and set yourself in
a way where when it comes to the range of
what the actual level of disruption is like, it's going
(21:37):
to be minimal.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
We'll get into how to do that after the break.
If somebody has ten minutes to do something that could
help lessen the damage. If somebody does decide to bother
them in the future, what could they do? What would
(21:59):
you say? The first thing to do is take.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
A look at the privacy settings on your social media
profiles and set them in a way where you have
a little bit more control of like who follows you,
who can tag you, who can comment on your posts,
and things of that type. That's a very easy one,
you know, look at the settings for messaging. Is my
phone number readily shared? If you pull up my profile,
(22:22):
can anyone dm me? Or like, do I have to
approve it? You know, like that type of thing. And
so that way you can kind of cut out a
lot of noise or reduce like what someone can actually
do to like your social media platforms.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Social media apps don't exactly optimize for you protecting your account.
I mean why would they. If you did, then it
could reduce how many people you interact with, and that
could potentially mean less time spent on their app. So
they don't always make these settings as easy to find
as they probably could. But in general, there are a
lot of settings that you can use to give you
(22:56):
more granular control over who can do what with your information,
and they're usually pretty easy to manage once you find them. Seriously,
you can do all this stuff on your phone right
now as you listen to the rest of this episode,
you can probably figure it out on your own, but
also put some links in the show notes that'll walk
you through securing an account for Instagram, for TikTok and
so on.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Just by toggling that switch in your privacy settings, you
already made yourself like a non target for a scammer.
You know, you talk about the ten seconds. Something that
takes one second could be the difference between like you
being targeted or not, because like a criminal or a
harasser is always kind of looking for the easiest target
(23:38):
or low hanging fruit.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Maybe the best way to do this is just for
a second, pretend that you are the aps put yourself
in the mind of someone who wants to find you
or hurt you. How would you go about it?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Imagine going to your social media profile and like look
at it from the perspective of someone who might harass
you and being like, is there anything that people can
see here use here that could be like used against me.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Googling yourself, Yeah, I've heard this advice is like google yourself,
see what you can find on just public services, and
if you can find your own phone number, maybe there's
something you can do about that.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, And I think that really can vary because like,
for example, in the US, privacy laws are really terrible.
Like you could you know, if you registered to vote,
there's probably an address for you out there right like
on a phone number that was like scraped offline, where
like if you live in Europe or somewhere else, like
it might be more difficult to get that information. And
so yeah, it's almost like a self doxing exercise looking
(24:40):
at it from the perspective of when people look me up,
how can they find me? What can they see about me?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
What do you think about the services that will go
and delete your information from those kind of online repositories
of collections of information.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
I mean, especially if you work in an industry where
you're prone to have like on you, I would highly
recommend considering some of those services.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
There's a lot of these services. There's delete me, Optoy,
and Cognitive basically services that will remove your personal data
for you from these databases that includes stuff like your address,
your email, your phone number, all that stuff that might
be floating out there online. These services do cost money,
but one thing you could try is asking your employer
if they'll pay for it for you, and if they don't,
(25:26):
I mean send them the episode and make the case
that maybe they should.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
A lot of Like what the things that services like
delete me does are things you can do for free
to make it more accessible. If you can't dishot one
hundred dollars, you could request that information take an offline,
but it's like you have to do it individually. It
just takes a lot more work.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
And look, I get it. Maybe your boss doesn't want
to play ball, or maybe money's just tight, or you
want to go the DIY route. So I'll put a
link in the show notes to the site that the
Freedom of the Press Foundation put together. It's called you
can't make this up. It's called the Big Ass Data
Broker opt Out List, and it will show you how
to send those takedown requests on your own. You can
(26:08):
also go through old social media posts and delete anything
with personal information, like let's say you once posted something
about moving into your new apartment, or god forbid those
pictures that people keep posting holding their keys outside in
front of the house that they just bought, please do
not do that. That is prime doxing material. And there's
absolutely no reason to keep that online. And if you
(26:30):
use Twitter, and let's say you don't want to have
somebody dig something up you said about Trump back in
twenty sixteen, you can use the advantagd search feature and
look for keywords or a past guest of the show,
Michael Lee, help make this tool called cyd dot Social
that will go back through your old tweets and help
you decide what you want to take down. And in
(26:50):
the future you can just be a little bit more
discerning about what you share online. It is okay to
lie to the computer. So for example, that field in
your social media account where it tells you to put
your location live, like, I don't use Twitter anymore, but
if you look at my account, it says that I'm
in Tokyo right now, and just between me and you,
(27:12):
I'm not in Tokyo right now.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
A lot of it is just like creating the habits
to make it harder or prayer to be a target
or like less vulnerable. So like being much more mindful
about posting about loved ones. You know, am I posting
anything that like directly shows where I live or like
places I like to hang out or spend time out
Pretty routinely. If you do want to post them chair
(27:35):
something online, just remember that like when you post the
chair something, it's ultimately like always.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
There nobody's telling you that you can't post stuff online
if you really want to. There's always the option of
making a fensta, a fake Instagram account or TikTok account
or whatever, basically making another account on any app aside
from the one that is more public facing, and on
that one you can be a little bit more personal
and you can only give that account out to family
and close friends, and this separation can extend beyond social media.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
You can even make a Google Voice number or any
other type of like service where you can get a
free digital number that you can sort of proverbally like
plug and unplug. So that way, like if you do
get her ass and you need some like quiets on,
you can do that.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I do this. I have a normal number for friends
and family, and I have another number that I give
out for work use. And there's free services for stuff
like this, like Google Voice is probably the most common. Also,
you don't have to have two physical phones. Whichever number
someone calls, they both go to my same phone. And
the cool thing about this is if I need to
deactivate that public number for a while, I can do that,
(28:43):
or if it really got bad, I just throw it
out and get a new one. And if you really
want to get secure, you can use signal and turn
on the option to hide your phone number. So let's
talk about passwords and things like that. What do you
recommend people do.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, go to kill switches.
Episode on password managers. No, like, seriously though, like a
password manager is really great, not way like your accounts
are more locked down.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
If you want to check out our episode about that,
there's a link in the show notes for that one,
but here's a short version. First, make sure that your
email account has a good password that isn't used in
any other log in, and then also get a password manager,
and some of those can be free. On top of that,
whenever you can use two factor authentication or a pass key.
So all this stuff setting up a new account, doxing yourself,
(29:33):
deleting all your personal information, and taking back control over
the information that is already out there. It might feel
a little bit overwhelming, but you don't have to do
all this stuff at once. Robbie recommends doing it a
little bit at a time.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
If you could take like five minutes to do one
small thing like once a week for a few weeks,
you could be really locked down. In the long term,
you don't have to spend an hour, you know, like
five hours out of time, just do it little bits,
and like that makes it a lot more manageable. It's
way better to like do those things at a leisurely
(30:08):
pace where you're not like pressured or stress Like before
a situation comes up, you do it in little bits.
Let's say it hits the fan, right like you're gonna
be under way more stress and pressure. You might already
have information that's been compromised, and now all of a sudden,
not only are you trying to like get the basics done,
but then like do way more to like keep an
(30:30):
eye on what the harassment looks like. So it's like
way way more work to do. It's better to like
do some of that stuff very naturally over time at
your own pace, and then also just like have have
a plan, like think about when I'm under stress, like
what is it that I can do to take care
of myself on an individual level? And like who can
I reach out to if a problem comes up?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
All the things that I mentioned this episode, all those tools,
all those guides, they're in the show notes, in the description.
But if you just look at one, I'm just gonna
tell you this Online Harassment Field Manual dot pin dot org.
I mta say it one more time. Online Harassment Field
Manual dot pin dot org. That site has a lot
(31:13):
more guys that can work for just about everyone in
just about every situation. You can imagine, whether you're being
targeted right now or you're worried about it happening to
you or someone else in the future. And it covers
all the stuff that we've covered and a lot more.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Most people don't have to take, like you know, one
hundred percent def con, I'm gonna lock everything down. You're
not gonna be able to reach me. Most people don't
need that. But I think you just have to think about,
like for yourself, are you more vulnerable because of the
work you do, who you are?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
If?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
It's very assuring, so many people have dealt with this
type of thing before, and like most people get through
it just fine. For anyone that's harassed, like know that
you're not alone, like a lot of people are really
to step in and support you. And not judge you,
so it's like critical that you don't isolate yourself.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Shout out to ROMI, shout out to the Freedom of
the Press Foundation, and shout out to everyone who's put
out materials to help us be safer online. Just enter
everyday lives and Happy New Year. Thank you so much
for listening to another episode of kill Switch. You want
to talk to us, you can email us at kill
switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC, or we're also on Instagram
(32:33):
at kill switch pod. If you dug this one, and
hopefully you did wherever you're listening to these podcasts, you know,
leave us a review. It helps other people find the show,
which in turn helps us keep doing our thing. Kill
Switch is hosted by Me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by
Shena Ozaki, dar Luck Potts and Julia Nutter. Our theme
song is by me and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also
(32:55):
mixed the show from Kaleidoscope. Our executive producers are oswaalachin
I Guess How to Get Tour and Kate Osborne from
iHeart are executive producers of Katrina Norville and Nikki e Tour.
Catch on the next one
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Goodbye,
A little while back, I called one of my friends
up just to say hey, and when they picked up,
I could tell they were freaking out, like their voice
was shaking, And I asked what was wrong and they said, oh,
I thought you called me because you saw And I
said saw, what? What are you talking about? And they said, well,
it's all over the internet have you seen it? And
I still didn't get it. So it turns out this
(00:31):
friend of mine had posted a TikTok of themselves talking
about something honestly pretty innocuous, but some small group of
people decided that they didn't like what was being said,
and they were being harassed online. I mean, it was
really bad. The post was full of hate comments, there
were hate messages in the inbox they'd gotten docked, and
someone had found their mother's email address and was sending
(00:53):
the family hate mail. I had no idea this was
going on, and it really bothered me, not just because
people are harassing my friend, but because this was the
third friend that this was happening to that month that
I knew of.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I would say most people do deal with online harassment
and don't necessarily talk about it or share or express it.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Rommy Galley is a security professional, and he's been working
on keeping journalists around the globe safe for over a decade.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It's sort of like an invisible epidemic cooksorce. Everyone is
so accessible today that sometimes things can just blow up
out of proportions, and because you're only experiencing it through
a screen, people aren't actually fully aware of what it
is that you're dealing with, so it's very isolating.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Romi actually started his career as a combat medic in
the US Marine Corps and he served in Afghanistan. His
unit responded to everything from backup requests from other units
to dealing with suicide bombings. When I met him in
twenty eighteen, he was my coworker advice on the security team.
At first, I just num is the guy who helped
organize training sessions for people who were going to go
report on dangerous conflict zones, and he'd tell you how
(02:07):
to stay safe out there. But as time went on,
even those of us who weren't traveling the war zones
realized that we also needed Robbie's help.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
The reality is danger can be present in very different ways,
and today I would say, actually it's much more conventionally
like the online sphere because online harassment incidents are much
more common than let's say, like a field incident. The
digital an online world are always there, so and it
sounds you could argue that when your digital hygiene isn't
(02:36):
up to par, you're sort of unwillingly placing yourself in
a vulnerable situation.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Four at ten adults in the US have dealt with
some kind of online harassment, and that's debt is from
almost a decade ago. So what do you do when
it happens to you or to someone you care about?
And is there a way to prepare for it? From
Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast. This is kill Switch, thisnect I'm
(03:13):
Dexter Thomas.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Starr, goodbye.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
How would you define online harassment?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I'm I mean, I think we know when we see
about generally it's like unwelcome engagement or interactions in the
online world that are intended to inflict harm troll in tendidate.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
For this episode, we're going to use the phrasing that
a human rights organization called pin America uses. They define
online harassment as quote pervasive or severe targeting of an
individual or group online through harmful behavior it's kind of
a broad definition, but that's because the kinds of things
that can happen to you online are pretty varied arranged.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Could be something as general as this individual account comes
to pay a lot of attention to my post, so
it could almost be something that stalker esque. Could be
someone who's just like a reply guy, you know, someone
who's always got something to say all the way, to
threats that are intended to essentially force people to stop
(04:56):
what they're doing or go offline. Sometimes it's like bots, farms,
people that get paid to harass people.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Online harassment is a very old problem. It's probably almost
as old as the Internet itself. The first mainstream media
use of the word cyberbullying was over two decades ago.
But it looks like it's intensifying. That statistic that I
mentioned in the beginning of the episode that in twenty seventeen,
close to half of US adults had experienced some form
(05:24):
of online harassment. When they did the same survey a
few years later, the ratios were about the same, but
the severity had increased. There were major percentage increases in
people reporting things like physical threats, sexual harassment, in stocking,
and in long sustained harassment campaigns. But regardless of the
scale this stuff can affect you in real.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Life, the stress response is very real, right, and like
this is I think where people can really underappreciate what
the impact of that is. It could be very destructive.
There are people that like leave industries, and today there
are a lot more instances in cases of like young
adults not just like going off of social media platforms
(06:08):
because they're harassed online or bullied, but like taking permanent measures.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
One study of kids age ten to thirteen found that
being targeted by cyberbullying was associated with suicidality That includes
everything from suicidal thoughts up to actual attempts, with odds
more than four times higher. So the feelings that we
get when we're being abused online are very real, and
online harassment doesn't always just stay online.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
What's always really concerned me is when online harassment shifts
over it to docsing and people's addresses are posted, or
you know, someone takes a photo or shows a Google
Maps like street photo of their home. It's very very
unsettling because you could have someone that's initially like I
hate you, you suck, and then it could be like
(06:57):
you deserve to be harmed, you know, all the way
to Like I've done research on you. I know where
you live, I know who your family members are, I
know you frequent these spaces, so like I know where
you go to school, I know where you go to work,
I know where you like to hang out.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, that's when it gets really scary. Yeah, but also
that sort of thing is getting easier to do. Like,
if I wanted to find where somebody lived, say even
five years ago, I think it was a little bit
more difficult and I need a little bit more technical skill.
It's easier to do that now, which is to say
that I actually don't need as much motivation as I
(07:37):
used to have to have in order to find somebody's
information and dox them or send them a bunch of messages.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, Like a simple backdrop of like the window that
looks out of your apartment building could be just an
easy way to like get a general guess as to
where you live. Right now, You've also got AI tools
and such that also make these things much easier today.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, totally right. I mean you could get a picture
of somebody and there's a window in the background. You
could ask Chad JBT, Hey where is this probably and
you know it'll give you a few guesses, and the
guesses might be correct.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Also, like the reality, I don't want to fear monger
about this topic itself. Most instances of online harassment are
you know, typically what you're going to see is an
uptick for a couple of days of harassment and generally
tends to die down. Most cases of online harassment don't
shift into physical risk.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
But some of it does. In one survey, four percent
of Americans say that they've been personally docked, and sixteen
percent know a friend or family member who's been docked.
Docing used to feel like this fringe thing, but now
it's just something that some people do when they don't
like someone's opinion, and it's becoming more common for these
things to be organized. After Charlie Kirk was killed, an
(08:53):
anonymous website popped up called Exposed Charlie's Murderers that ask
people to submit personal information of anyone that they thought
wasn't being respectful enough about Charlie Kirk. The possible implication
here is that, hey, you don't have to do anything
with that information, but if someone else with a hotter
temper happens to see it and they live nearby that address, Well,
(09:15):
not your problem. Vice President Jady Vance did a guest
spot on Charlie Kirk's podcast, and well, he didn't exactly
condemn the idea of using someone's personal information to punish
them for an opinion that he didn't like. So when
you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell,
call their employer. We don't believe in political violence, but
(09:35):
we do believe in civility. Again, doxing is like an
informal ad hoc collaboration with strangers that can lead to
potential violence. One guy puts the information out there, and
then someone else takes that information and does whatever the
first guy didn't have the nerve to do. Like swatting.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Alarming warning from the FBI this afternoon about the emerging
crime of swatting. A swatting incident is when someone targets
of the by making a nine to one one call
falsely claiming there's an emergency at the victim's home, and
the medicine can be dangerous.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
The FBI and some former federal investigators warn this is
a danger to neighborhoods when there are swattings if something
goes wrong, when a false call is made and swat
teams show up at somebody's door unknown to that person.
In fact, one former FBI agent told CBS News, it
could turn deadly.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Swatting unfortunately, has been common going back well over a decade,
so some police departments are better prepared for these fake calls,
but not all of them. So doxing harassment. These are
not new concepts, but something that is new in this
equation is AI. Just like it can make mundane tasks
like sorting files or writing emails easier, AI can make
(10:47):
harassing people a lot easier than it's ever been.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
They're like certain ways that AI can be used that
are really important to consider, like deep fakes, some things
of the type AI tool that take someone's face I
like superimpose it onto like an inappropriate picture or something.
One trend that I would say can be in line
with online harassments, like online extortion specifically used to target
(11:14):
children and young adults. Were like scam centers that essentially
look someone up, find either are an embarrassing photo of someone,
or take a photo of someone superimposed it make it
look like something else, and then they reach out and say, hey,
I have this really embarrassing thing about you, or I
hijacked your account and found these personal photos or something
(11:35):
of the sort. I'm gonna post them online unless you
give me x amount of money.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Deep fake revenge porn has been a problem for years,
and for a long time there was no real legal
recourse to address it in the US. So some things
are changing. Just this past May, a new law now
requires platforms to take down non consensual intimate images, whether
they're real or AI generated, if the person in them
request it. But there's limitations here. That law can't necessarily
(12:04):
do much about deep fakes hosted on a service that's
outside of the US, or prevent people from, say, sending
deep fake nude pictures of you to your friends to
harass you faster than the services can take them down.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I would say I've lost faith and social media platforms
being able to actually protect people. Social media platforms, i
would argue, are there to make money off of us,
you know, learn about our habits and sell that information
to advertisers. Right Like, it's a business at the end
of the day.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So if you can't really rely on platforms or the law,
what can you do if someone is harassing you online,
that's after the break. Let's say you wake up, look
(12:57):
at your phone, you see all these notifications, and you
realize there's a bunch of people harassing you. What do
you do?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So first and foremost, take a breath, right, like take
a moment. Am I safe? Am I good? Right now?
Because like, online harassment isn't just digital right like immediately
once you're being attacked, once someone is holding a magnifying
glass to you, it's also like mentally very taxing and
can be extremely draining. So it's important to like try
(13:27):
and pace yourself as much as we're immediately going to
go in the sort of fight flight or freeze responses,
be mindful that this has a mental impact on you.
But when it comes to like okay, I'm seeing these messages,
I don't know what's happening, what's going on? The first
thing I would personally do is like get a read
on the situation. So that's like going online to see
(13:48):
the types of messages you got, getting a sense of
how sort of large spans is this just on like
my install, my snapchat, my TikTok, or is it all
the weight in my work? Professional accounts, are loved ones
being impacted. You could, on one hand, just be dealing
with like a post or something that blows up, goes
(14:09):
viral all the way to I'm getting emails that are
saying my account is like open on another browser or
laptop or phone. So yeah, Initially, what you want to
do is like get a sense of how big the
footprint of the harassment is, and then through that, obviously
you should be able to also get a sense of
are these people that are just disagreeing with me? Are
(14:31):
they just trying to sort of insult me, make me
feel bad? Or is there like anything in there that
is truly concerning, right, like we talked about with docsing
And then along with that, right, like, I think some
things you have to consider. You know, am I going
to put my phone on silent? It's like blowing up nonstoff?
Do I need to lie low? Do I need to
stop posting online if there's a lot more attention on
(14:52):
me all of a sudden? Do I need to lock
down my personal accounts that might have just been compromised.
Are authorities helpful in this situation? Are they going to
make things worse?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So step one is the step back remember when I
said that my friend had told me that it's all
over the internet. I had not seen any of this
stuff because the two of us run in very different
online circles. It was not all over the internet, but
for them it was. And this is the same thing
with anyone else who's ever experienced this that I've talked
(15:23):
to about this. It really does feel like everyone in
the world is focused on you, like you can't even
go outside. This isn't you being irrational? I mean, yes,
of course, there is a logical difference in danger between
you sitting on the couch and getting a bunch of
angry messages and you sitting on the couch and somebody
walks in with a knife. But your brain might interpret
(15:44):
both as Yo, someone just entered your space and you
are now in danger. So those feelings are not fake,
they're real and we should respect them. But realistically, if
you can take a breath in that moment, it is
only a very tiny corner of the Internet that is
interested in you, and it is almost certainly temporary. Sometimes
it feels like you have to be glued to your phone,
(16:06):
watching every comment, every message as it comes in. But
maybe walking away for a bit might help.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Typically you'd want to do that after you make sure
like you changed your passwords or like you checked and
make sure like you're not docs. It's just people being mean,
So like maybe then you take a breather, go spend
time with friends. From the sort of mental health like
mental hygiene perspective, endless doom scrolling is not necessarily good
for us, and especially not the type of constant oh
(16:37):
what's being said about me now? That type of thing.
One thing that I would also especially recommend when you
see these types of things is I think there's always
like an instinct to just delete, delete, you know, like
get rid of it clear at all. But the issue
with that is that you're not then able to sort
of monitor or get a sense of the way things
are changing. And then also, like from a legal perspective
(17:00):
over holding people accountable, it's also important so like not
get rid of that information. So don't just like delete
everything all of a sudden, because sometimes there's really like
important information in there that you might overlook. There are
ways that you can also limit the chat or and
the notifications and things like that, and like there are
(17:20):
ways that you could set filters or restrictions some platforms
have privacy settings that allow you to either block, which
is like completely out of sight muting meaning like you
don't constantly get notifications, or even then like restriction, like
some social media platforms have the ability to restrict someone,
(17:40):
and you can also set it to where like you
can see only if you want to appear in the
headspace to see and deal with it.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Shout out to the mute function. Muting can be really useful.
You can still use Instagram or whatever to talk to
your friends without having to see accounts or posts or
notifications that are stressing you out. But in case you
do need to go back and show those post to someone,
like maybe say, worst case scenario, the police, it's still available.
On Instagram, you can mute a person so that you
(18:07):
don't see their posts or their stories. On Twitter, you
can mute accounts or even specific words or hashtags. Facebook,
Blue Sky, TikTok. Most platforms have similar options just like this.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Beyond the point of like taking a breath, like pacing yourself,
like using the resources on people around you and like
your family and your loved ones. You know, online harassment,
that type of thing can like feel very embarrassing and
so because you're embarrassed, you don't talk about it. So
then when you don't talk about it, you're like isolating yourself.
So yeah, like leaning into your social groups, whether that's
(18:39):
like family, loved ones, colleagues.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
That statistic that I mentioned at the beginning that almost
half of all American adults have experienced some kind of
online harassment. It sounds really bad, but there's actually I
think it's silver lining. It means that you're not alone.
But this is where a lot of people get stuck
by self isolating. It is extremely important to talk to
people about what you're going through. Do not hide this.
(19:05):
People in your life might be able to help you out.
Maybe your boss can let you work from home if
you need to, or maybe your friends can monitor your
social media for you while you take a quick break
from it.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I've had friends that reach out to me because we
work in the same industry and they're like, I'm expecting
some emails that are really mean and hurtful. Could you
just take a look at these really quickly, or like,
could you sit with me while I read through some
of these rather than like looking at it alone. They
could sit next to someone and like kind of laugh
about it. You know, and just kind of more so
(19:37):
put it in its place. In that sense, I.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Think a lot of times there's the desire to jump
in and respond to people. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, I would say it definitely depends, right, because sometimes
especially when you feel like you're overwhelmed by negative comments
or people kind of puting a negative light out of context,
it is a important to set the record straight, say something.
But it very much depends, right. I like to say
first and foremost like don't feed the trolls, And a
(20:09):
lot of instances someone is looking to like get under
your skin. In certain instances, like you're responding is actually
encouraging people to harass you a bit more, and online harassment,
you're having something harmful or damaging being done to you.
So it's also important to take power. But like the
point I argue is like taking power in the constructive
(20:30):
and helpful way rather than just engaging with a troll
or something of the sort.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
If you're a friend who's watching someone deal with harassment,
the same thing applies. It might not be helpful to
try to argue in the comments on someone's behalf, and
it actually might be dangerous for you to do that.
Really you can just ask the person, hey, yo, is
there anything I can do for you? And it might
be to just go over and hang out or bring
them dinner. I mean, seriously, it sounds kind of touchy feely,
(20:57):
but if you want to fight back against the keyboard warriors,
one of your best weapons is probably a well placed
pizza order. So those are some concrete steps you can
take if you're dealing with some sudden hate comments or
some hate mail, But the best thing you can do
to protect yourself happens way before the harassment ever starts.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
One of the most important things I like the best
way to deal with online harassment is by initially preparing
for it, so like you can kind of front load
a lot of the work, and then ultimately when it
does come to harassment, you shut it up. You're kind
of ready for it. You've established and set yourself in
a way where when it comes to the range of
what the actual level of disruption is like, it's going
(21:37):
to be minimal.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
We'll get into how to do that after the break.
If somebody has ten minutes to do something that could
help lessen the damage. If somebody does decide to bother
them in the future, what could they do? What would
(21:59):
you say? The first thing to do is take.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
A look at the privacy settings on your social media
profiles and set them in a way where you have
a little bit more control of like who follows you,
who can tag you, who can comment on your posts,
and things of that type. That's a very easy one,
you know, look at the settings for messaging. Is my
phone number readily shared? If you pull up my profile,
(22:22):
can anyone dm me? Or like, do I have to
approve it? You know, like that type of thing. And
so that way you can kind of cut out a
lot of noise or reduce like what someone can actually
do to like your social media platforms.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Social media apps don't exactly optimize for you protecting your account.
I mean why would they. If you did, then it
could reduce how many people you interact with, and that
could potentially mean less time spent on their app. So
they don't always make these settings as easy to find
as they probably could. But in general, there are a
lot of settings that you can use to give you
(22:56):
more granular control over who can do what with your information,
and they're usually pretty easy to manage once you find them. Seriously,
you can do all this stuff on your phone right
now as you listen to the rest of this episode,
you can probably figure it out on your own, but
also put some links in the show notes that'll walk
you through securing an account for Instagram, for TikTok and
so on.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Just by toggling that switch in your privacy settings, you
already made yourself like a non target for a scammer.
You know, you talk about the ten seconds. Something that
takes one second could be the difference between like you
being targeted or not, because like a criminal or a
harasser is always kind of looking for the easiest target
(23:38):
or low hanging fruit.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Maybe the best way to do this is just for
a second, pretend that you are the aps put yourself
in the mind of someone who wants to find you
or hurt you. How would you go about it?
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Imagine going to your social media profile and like look
at it from the perspective of someone who might harass
you and being like, is there anything that people can
see here use here that could be like used against me.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Googling yourself, Yeah, I've heard this advice is like google yourself,
see what you can find on just public services, and
if you can find your own phone number, maybe there's
something you can do about that.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, And I think that really can vary because like,
for example, in the US, privacy laws are really terrible.
Like you could you know, if you registered to vote,
there's probably an address for you out there right like
on a phone number that was like scraped offline, where
like if you live in Europe or somewhere else, like
it might be more difficult to get that information. And
so yeah, it's almost like a self doxing exercise looking
(24:40):
at it from the perspective of when people look me up,
how can they find me? What can they see about me?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
What do you think about the services that will go
and delete your information from those kind of online repositories
of collections of information.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
I mean, especially if you work in an industry where
you're prone to have like on you, I would highly
recommend considering some of those services.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
There's a lot of these services. There's delete me, Optoy,
and Cognitive basically services that will remove your personal data
for you from these databases that includes stuff like your address,
your email, your phone number, all that stuff that might
be floating out there online. These services do cost money,
but one thing you could try is asking your employer
if they'll pay for it for you, and if they don't,
(25:26):
I mean send them the episode and make the case
that maybe they should.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
A lot of Like what the things that services like
delete me does are things you can do for free
to make it more accessible. If you can't dishot one
hundred dollars, you could request that information take an offline,
but it's like you have to do it individually. It
just takes a lot more work.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
And look, I get it. Maybe your boss doesn't want
to play ball, or maybe money's just tight, or you
want to go the DIY route. So I'll put a
link in the show notes to the site that the
Freedom of the Press Foundation put together. It's called you
can't make this up. It's called the Big Ass Data
Broker opt Out List, and it will show you how
to send those takedown requests on your own. You can
(26:08):
also go through old social media posts and delete anything
with personal information, like let's say you once posted something
about moving into your new apartment, or god forbid those
pictures that people keep posting holding their keys outside in
front of the house that they just bought, please do
not do that. That is prime doxing material. And there's
absolutely no reason to keep that online. And if you
(26:30):
use Twitter, and let's say you don't want to have
somebody dig something up you said about Trump back in
twenty sixteen, you can use the advantagd search feature and
look for keywords or a past guest of the show,
Michael Lee, help make this tool called cyd dot Social
that will go back through your old tweets and help
you decide what you want to take down. And in
(26:50):
the future you can just be a little bit more
discerning about what you share online. It is okay to
lie to the computer. So for example, that field in
your social media account where it tells you to put
your location live, like, I don't use Twitter anymore, but
if you look at my account, it says that I'm
in Tokyo right now, and just between me and you,
(27:12):
I'm not in Tokyo right now.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
A lot of it is just like creating the habits
to make it harder or prayer to be a target
or like less vulnerable. So like being much more mindful
about posting about loved ones. You know, am I posting
anything that like directly shows where I live or like
places I like to hang out or spend time out
Pretty routinely. If you do want to post them chair
(27:35):
something online, just remember that like when you post the
chair something, it's ultimately like always.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
There nobody's telling you that you can't post stuff online
if you really want to. There's always the option of
making a fensta, a fake Instagram account or TikTok account
or whatever, basically making another account on any app aside
from the one that is more public facing, and on
that one you can be a little bit more personal
and you can only give that account out to family
and close friends, and this separation can extend beyond social media.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
You can even make a Google Voice number or any
other type of like service where you can get a
free digital number that you can sort of proverbally like
plug and unplug. So that way, like if you do
get her ass and you need some like quiets on,
you can do that.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I do this. I have a normal number for friends
and family, and I have another number that I give
out for work use. And there's free services for stuff
like this, like Google Voice is probably the most common. Also,
you don't have to have two physical phones. Whichever number
someone calls, they both go to my same phone. And
the cool thing about this is if I need to
deactivate that public number for a while, I can do that,
(28:43):
or if it really got bad, I just throw it
out and get a new one. And if you really
want to get secure, you can use signal and turn
on the option to hide your phone number. So let's
talk about passwords and things like that. What do you
recommend people do.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, go to kill switches.
Episode on password managers. No, like, seriously though, like a
password manager is really great, not way like your accounts
are more locked down.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
If you want to check out our episode about that,
there's a link in the show notes for that one,
but here's a short version. First, make sure that your
email account has a good password that isn't used in
any other log in, and then also get a password manager,
and some of those can be free. On top of that,
whenever you can use two factor authentication or a pass key.
So all this stuff setting up a new account, doxing yourself,
(29:33):
deleting all your personal information, and taking back control over
the information that is already out there. It might feel
a little bit overwhelming, but you don't have to do
all this stuff at once. Robbie recommends doing it a
little bit at a time.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
If you could take like five minutes to do one
small thing like once a week for a few weeks,
you could be really locked down. In the long term,
you don't have to spend an hour, you know, like
five hours out of time, just do it little bits,
and like that makes it a lot more manageable. It's
way better to like do those things at a leisurely
(30:08):
pace where you're not like pressured or stress Like before
a situation comes up, you do it in little bits.
Let's say it hits the fan, right like you're gonna
be under way more stress and pressure. You might already
have information that's been compromised, and now all of a sudden,
not only are you trying to like get the basics done,
but then like do way more to like keep an
(30:30):
eye on what the harassment looks like. So it's like
way way more work to do. It's better to like
do some of that stuff very naturally over time at
your own pace, and then also just like have have
a plan, like think about when I'm under stress, like
what is it that I can do to take care
of myself on an individual level? And like who can
I reach out to if a problem comes up?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
All the things that I mentioned this episode, all those tools,
all those guides, they're in the show notes, in the description.
But if you just look at one, I'm just gonna
tell you this Online Harassment Field Manual dot pin dot org.
I mta say it one more time. Online Harassment Field
Manual dot pin dot org. That site has a lot
(31:13):
more guys that can work for just about everyone in
just about every situation. You can imagine, whether you're being
targeted right now or you're worried about it happening to
you or someone else in the future. And it covers
all the stuff that we've covered and a lot more.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Most people don't have to take, like you know, one
hundred percent def con, I'm gonna lock everything down. You're
not gonna be able to reach me. Most people don't
need that. But I think you just have to think about,
like for yourself, are you more vulnerable because of the
work you do, who you are?
Speaker 3 (31:45):
If?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
It's very assuring, so many people have dealt with this
type of thing before, and like most people get through
it just fine. For anyone that's harassed, like know that
you're not alone, like a lot of people are really
to step in and support you. And not judge you,
so it's like critical that you don't isolate yourself.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Shout out to ROMI, shout out to the Freedom of
the Press Foundation, and shout out to everyone who's put
out materials to help us be safer online. Just enter
everyday lives and Happy New Year. Thank you so much
for listening to another episode of kill Switch. You want
to talk to us, you can email us at kill
switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC, or we're also on Instagram
(32:33):
at kill switch pod. If you dug this one, and
hopefully you did wherever you're listening to these podcasts, you know,
leave us a review. It helps other people find the show,
which in turn helps us keep doing our thing. Kill
Switch is hosted by Me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by
Shena Ozaki, dar Luck Potts and Julia Nutter. Our theme
song is by me and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also
(32:55):
mixed the show from Kaleidoscope. Our executive producers are oswaalachin
I Guess How to Get Tour and Kate Osborne from
iHeart are executive producers of Katrina Norville and Nikki e Tour.
Catch on the next one
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Goodbye,
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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