Doxing is the act of publishing private information and identifying information about an individual online with intent to harm. Doxing is done in order to shame someone, encourage other online users to intimidate someone, or put the person being doxed in actual danger. Doxing may be spelled with two “x‘s”, as in doxxing. Doxing may be used as a noun or a verb, related terms are dox, doxes, doxed, dox, doxxes, doxxed. Doxing is a new word, it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2014. Originally, the word dox was used by computer hackers as an abbreviation for the plural word documents. In the mid-2000s dox came to mean revealing the true identity of a computer user, and by 2008 doxing came to also mean publishing private information online about an individual online, a method of harrassment.
Examples
OSCE Rep. hopes those responsible for doxing journos in Ukraine to be punished (Ukraine Today)
In Internet parlance, it’s called doxing: the strategic outing of an opponent’s real name, home address, or other private information, published with the intention of inconveniencing, frightening or straight-up endangering them. (The Washington Post)
Doxing is becoming one of the easiest ways for hackers and other miscreants to get revenge in a widespread and public manner. (The Miami New Times)
Twitter bans revenge porn and ‘doxing’ amid crackdown on abuse (The Independent)
The Internet is rife with hoaxes of various levels of severity, from phony pizza deliveries to “text-bombing,” to more serious crimes like “doxing” (publishing private information) and fraud. (The Boston Globe)
LaFrance acknowledged that both men and women endure abuse online, particularly on public platforms like Twitter, but women appear to suffer more frequent, more intense, and more dangerous abuse—including extreme cases like doxxing, in which a target’s private information is published online, or swatting, in which that information is used to incite a fraudulent law enforcement raid on a target’s home or business. (The Atlantic Magazine)