If you’re an executive or any kind of high-profile individual, your public profile can make you a target both online and offline. Doxxing, digital stalking, and open-source intelligence (OSINT) can expose personal information and create physical security risks for you and your family.
Understanding how these threats work, maintaining strong digital security habits, and partnering with professional executive protection can help you reduce your exposure to these often-overlooked risks.
What is doxxing?
Doxxing is the deliberate publication or exposure of your identifying information without your consent. This might involve an attacker collecting your home address, phone number, family information, travel details, or other personal data and publishing it online for anyone to access, including other, unrelated attackers.
With this information, bad actors can harass you and your family in person, physically surveil your home, or worse.
One of the things that makes doxxing so dangerous is how relatively easy it is. Criminals don’t need to hack into your network or use sophisticated tools to get your personal information. An attacker can simply comb through social media posts, public records, company websites, data broker listings, and other online sources to build a detailed profile of you, then move on to those close to you.
How to prevent getting doxxed
Since much of the information needed to dox you lives online, reducing your digital footprint makes it much harder for an attacker to find and piece together information about you.
Review what personal information is publicly available about you and your family, then:
- Remove unnecessary personal information from social media profiles.
- Request removal of your information from data broker websites where possible.
- Avoid posting real-time locations, travel plans, or identifiable home details.
- Use separate contact information for business and personal activities.
- Review privacy settings and connected accounts regularly.
Executive protection services can add another layer of defense. A protective intelligence team can assess physical and digital exposure, identify potential risks, and help you coordinate security measures when online threats could translate into real-world danger.
Stalking in the digital age
Modern stalking does not always begin with someone physically following you. A stalker can use social media, location data, leaked personal information, and other digital traces to monitor your activities and movements.
Digital stalking can involve impersonation, spyware, monitoring of public posts, or tracking of your location data. Since they don’t need to be physically present, digital stalkers have a much easier time avoiding detection.
The key risk of stalking is that seemingly harmless information can reveal patterns. With this information, stalkers can predict where you will be, making it easier to launch all manner of attacks.
How executives should deal with stalking
The most important thing to do is to take persistent unwanted attention seriously, particularly when the behavior becomes threatening or escalates. There’s no such thing as a “harmless” stalker, so always preserve relevant evidence and report credible threats to the appropriate authorities.
You should also regularly review your digital accounts and physical security practices. If you have an executive protection team, they can help you assess whether online behavior presents a physical security concern.
What is OSINT, and how can it expose you?
OSINT, or open-source intelligence, refers to information gathered from publicly available sources, including but not limited to:
- Social media posts (yours or others)
- Publicly available government records (FOIA, etc.)
- Public satellite imagery (Google Maps, MAXAR, etc.)
- News media
- Online directories and information repositories
Individually, bits of information from one of these sources may seem harmless. Together, however, they can create a surprisingly detailed picture of your life. Experienced analysts can link this data together to reveal relationships, locations, routines, and other useful details that can be used against you.
How to avoid giving away confidential information
Start by treating public information as part of your security profile. Review the privacy and security settings for all social media accounts or any other publicly accessible platform that stores your data.
Then, with the help of professional analysts, conduct periodic exposure assessments to see what a determined person could learn about you using ordinary online sources.
Also, have your executive protection team perform structured threat assessments and OSINT reviews to identify information that could increase your risk. This data will help them recommend practical changes to your online presence and physical security plan.
If you’re unsure how much information about you is publicly available and worried about someone using it against you, contact Aspis Protection Services. Our protection teams are fully versed in all manner of threats and will help minimize your public exposure to prevent digital risks from becoming physical ones.