Topic: New investigations board & restrictions on posting personal information - page 3. (Read 18572 times)

I'm not sure why it would be illegal to (e.g.) summarize your information taken from a social network and post it here? There is information that may be illegal to post (e.g. social security number), but I wouldn't consider details that can be found via google to be illegal.

Are you already looking for mediators or was this just a thought?

Huh?

Right from Wikipedia
Doxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents),[1] or doxxing,[2][3] is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual.

I am sure that is not legal in my jurisdiction.

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http://theothermccain.com/2012/11/19/update-walker-v-kimberlin-et-al-also-why-doxing-is-always-illegal/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2012/11/28/the-illegal-activity-of-doxing-revealing-documents-or-personal-information-about-a-person-without-their-permission-with-the-intent-to-threaten-harass-intimidate-shame-humiliate-or-place/

Not allowed.


That's unusual, and would probably depend on the situation.

what if someone else is carrying a link in their signature,trust page etc.. which leads to the dox. It is not directly posted on forum.

what if someone is doing a giveaway and writing the dox as a "Public Note:" in the transactions.

I just want to know what are the rules when dox is not posted directly on the forum ?

No. Report that by posting to Meta.


It has to be moved to Investigations. Unfortunately, there's no way that I can easily make the forum allow them to see just their own thread, which would be ideal. I guess they'll have to work through a Member+ mediator. It might be helpful if some people would volunteer to act as mediators in these cases, and then I could list them in a sticky.

Interesting situation, but the newbie account in question was created only yesterday.
So it is probably a throw-away account created just to dox somebody.

So when newbies (or juniors) post stuff that would go into the Investiation board, what's the right move for that?
I've recently reported a post^[1] of one that got afterwards moved into the section, which currently locks them out of accessing their own thread.

[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--1576669

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It's not that thread in particular, but the situation generally that catched my interest.
Also would like to know how to handle reports/comments on reports in those cases.

Thanks. What about trust feedback? I know those are not googleable but visible to users below Member (which is the threshold for "Investigations"). Is doxing allowed there?

For non-local content of that sort, please post it in Investigations and then export any conclusions to scam accusations.

Yes. They'll at least be nuked, and then maybe I will rename the user.

Here is another one. There's a user who created a few puppets with usernames that are supposedly real names of other users... i.e. the dox being the username itself, there was some personal text too I think (not the sig but the one on the left side). Is that reportable too? How would that be handled? Even nuked users still remain in the user list, right? Indexable by Google?

I see where you are coming from with regard to "in house" BCT scammers and accusations, but my interest is in the wider picture of Bitcoin investment generally.
If I see a Bitcoin scheme in the wild which I think could do with a closer look and I find something of interest, then I will post about it here because this forum reaches a wide BTC audience, in the hope that when people see the bigger picture behind the scheme, including the principals' history, it will inform their judgement about whether or not to invest in it.
This one for example, which I posted in the local sub forum most likely to reach people with interest in it.
It is not a scam accusation, but contextualizes the scheme on offer and its prime mover's history. It would be meaningless without identifying the actors involved. Also, further useful input may be contributed by others who see a name, picture or other "dox" type detail and recognise it from the past.
To relate the current scheme on offer to past ones operated by them, "doxxing" the people involved is an essential step, not because there is any benefit per se in exposing their meatspace identities, but because it is the link between the two and establishes a pattern of behaviour.

How will the new regime affect this sort of post?   

OK, I changed the text.

But you are telling people that the Google search is recommended. Maybe you could add some kind of disclaimer that users should use the forum search when looking up "real" names, and to specifically not use the google search for these searches.

Yeah, only public sections are indexed by Google. If you're looking for something in Investigations, you'll have to use the forum's built-in search.

The search page encourages people to use the google search. So if a person who is a full member, were to be doing a trade with "John Smith" from "Springfield" and this person is sending a Western Union payment and expects to receive Bitcoin in return, then this person might use the custom Google search to search for "John Smith Springfield" then the Custom Google search will come back with no results, even if there is a thread in investigations warning people that "John Smith" from Springfield has scammed many people for smallish amounts each (all adding up to a large sum).

I assume there's an exception here if you're posting your own dox.

I don't know enough about those cases to say. If you think so, create a new topic in Meta with your reasoning.



For now, I'm thinking that maybe the whole idea of publishing dox should be reexamined. What does it really gain? If people are going to use the dox to illegally harass this person, then that's not a good result. If people are using the information for legal cases and police reports, then that is good, but I think that in most cases this can be done from the non-public Investigations board.

On a case-by-case basis, I'd like to see a utilitarian argument in Meta about exactly what is gained by publishing specific bits of uncovered info. For example, maybe there is significant utility in publishing this person's name and general location, to warn others, but not his full address. Another thing which must be addressed is how we can be sure that the person being doxxed is the person who did the scamming, and that they are actually guilty of the scamming. I certainly don't want to return to the scammer tag era of me single-handedly deciding these things. After a few of these cases are hammered out in Meta, perhaps a uniform policy will emerge.


Yes, cross-linking is good. Post your conclusions in Scam Accusations (eg. x is an alt of y, x has a history of scamming, etc.), but keep the investigations themselves in Investigations. My idea is that trustworthy members will export any important information about alts, trustworthiness, etc. from Investigations, while keeping the actual private information in a non-public section.


Report one of their posts. If they don't have any posts, post in Meta about it.

When a user is autobanned (ie. a specific type of permaban initiated by moderators, but then put in place automatically), their signature is cleared. If a user doesn't deserve a permaban, then either they can be autobanned and unbanned by one of the mods with manual-ban permissions, or else an admin can adjust their signature directly.


They'll be deindexed a while after being moved.

How will the custom Google search (found in between help and donate) handle threads in the investigations section?

Thanks. Just making sure there aren't obvious loopholes. I already reported the BST thread in my sig to get moved because it has dox in the OP and much more further down the thread. Since the sig itself doesn't dox anyone I think that should be good enough.