How I 'doxx' my journalist colleagues every week to keep them safe online

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In the past week, I have ‘doxxed’ four journalists to help them identify and secure their digital information following threats, intimidation, backlash or attempts being made to silence them or squash stories they have been working on.

When I started as the online safety editor at Reach back in 2021, a week like this one would have been relatively unusual.

But in 2025, I ‘doxx’ my colleagues almost every week.

‘Doxxing’ is the practice of finding personal information about an individual and using it maliciously in online spaces, often with the intention of intimidating a person or smearing their reputation.

To be clear, this is not how I operate. Instead, I take the principles of doxxing and apply them to help a colleague identify what information is out there about them and where they might want to make changes.

I always do this with the knowledge and permission of the individual and quite often we will sit on a call together while I share my screen and conduct the searches with them, so they can see what I find. Once we have identified any areas the journalist might want to make change, I provide links and information to help them do this quickly and easily.

It can be an eye-opening experience, even for the most private of online users, to look themselves up through the eyes of a relative stranger.

And it can be a bit of a shock to discover how quickly I can find their home address and personal phone number online, or the names of their family members in publicly available spaces. It is a surprise how easily we can build a picture of a person through a small piece of information here and another over there.

When OSINT falls into the wrong hands

This practice is not new, of course. Journalists have been doing it for years.

In fact, open source intelligence (looking someone up through publicly available information) is an investigative technique that dates back to the days of the BT phone book and even before.

But as more information becomes available online, it is no longer just the professionals who choose to look someone up.

For example, we see tales of people whose online information has led to their being duped into relationships by fake online profiles. Or headlines about hackers stealing personal information for financial gain.

While journalists are absolutely a major target for online abusers, the general public is not immune to being made a victim of similar harm. And, as is often covered by our own news titles, anyone can find themselves in the centre of a digital storm.

It was the culmination of the work I do with journalists and the stories we see in our news agenda that spawned the idea for Go Doxx Yourself, a podcast designed to unpick some of the human stories behind cyber nightmares and which is out now on Apple and Spotify.

What sets the podcast aside is that not only do we hear about the human experience and impact of online harm, but each episode offers practical advice to help the listener protect themselves or take action in a similar situation.

The true cost of virality

The series launched with an interview with Kirsty Paterson, who was made famous overnight when a picture of her dressed as an Oompa Loompa went viral. The story was one which was covered extensively at the time by all news publishers, including Reach and in the conversation, we discuss the role of the media in these kinds of stories.

Kirsty said seeing her image on screens and being used in marketing and advertising by big-name brands was both shocking and frustrating, especially as she did not see any financial benefit. But in the episode, she discusses how she reclaimed the narrative and used the opportunity of becoming a viral sensation to get interviews and work as an actress and influencer.

The episode also offered tips on how to manage mental health and wellbeing in the event of being pushed into the public spotlight and Kirsty outlined how the media had a responsibility for recognising the impact intense coverage might have on those involved in a viral story.

In other episodes, the work I do as online safety editor is very much an influence on the subject we discuss. For example, the second episode focuses on a fetishist who duped potentially hundreds of female journalists, including me, into looking at explicit content through fake online profiles. Later on, I discovered colleagues and journalists working elsewhere had also been exposed to his obsessive and unacceptable behaviour, and it prompted me to investigate further.

In other episodes, I examine how fraudsters make use of open source intelligence and exploit personal relationships, with one mum telling me about how she was conned into parting with around £7,000 by a text messager pretending to be her son. As part of the chat, I speak to an expert in cyber safety about how listeners can ‘doxx themselves’ to protect against online fraudsters.

Inspired by the journalists I have seen having to protect themselves against abuse, a later episode investigates with two experts about how fans can enjoy football chat in online spaces without letting trolls ruin the experience.

Over the course of ten episodes, the podcast, which is produced by Reach’s award-winning podcast editor Daniel J McLaughlin, explores real-life stories but also offers listeners practical tips on how they can protect themselves and often brings elements of my everyday work into the conversation.

The season is due to end with a live recording at Leeds Digital Festival on 24 September, in conjunction with Leeds Trinity University, where we hope to have the audience ‘doxx’ themselves - AKA look up their own online information - as part of the event.

I feel so lucky to have been able to bring together my work to help people protect themselves online with my journalistic work. And I can’t help but feel that with the continued online issues I see every day in my work, there is already material for a second season.

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