this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025

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Lemmy users dox a random person for fun (lemmy.nz)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

44 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A meme was posted to c/[email protected] with a partial picture of a driver's licence. The Lemmy users in the comments proceeded to post all the identifying information they could get from the license, including gender, date of birth, and zip code of the person's home. The meme is probably reposted and so this isn't doxxing the Lemmy OP, but that's what the users in the comments seem to think they're doing.

Collecting and disseminating someone's personal information is doxxing even if that information could be found anyway with enough time and knowledge.

all 47 comments

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Most sane Lemmy user :

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Moral of the story: when in doubt, pixelize any potential personally identifiable information (aka PII).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago

Black it out. Don't pixelate it.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Don't just pixelate, just straight up remove or cover it with a solid color.

Still unlikely, but there might be a way to reverse it. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/researcher-reverses-redaction-extracts-words-from-pixelated-image/

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There was also Acropalypse, a bug in a default image editor on Google Pixels which let you undo crops of screenshots. That must be fixed by now, but it's still something to be aware of. You need to be certain that your edit truly removes the information from the file.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Acropalypse

That's a 10/10 name.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I get by with simply not posting any PII. I don't even post pictures from the inside of my apartment, for fear that someone will say "I recognize that floor plan, and that dent in the wall! You live at 2112 North Zimmerly, apartment 626, zip code 67202!" In fact, I obfuscate my identity as much as reasonably possible by only ever telling approximate truths about personal experiences, and outright lies about specifics.

My name is Pete, I was born May 15th 1995, I've lived in Wichita Kansas my entire life, where I've worked 3 minimum wage jobs, the latest of which I've been at for over 10 years. I have a dog named Charlie and a cat named Scooter. Exactly one statement in this paragraph is true.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The last sentence seems almost recursive.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If the last statement isn't true, then the entire paragraph could be a lie.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Or the whole paragraph could be true, except the last sentence, yes

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

You're assuming everyone involved had good intentions.

[–] Fungah 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Why can't I help but feel that this is target anti Lemmy ragebait?

Oh, won't somebody please the think of the children! My poor pearls are in ever so much ranger.

This is the kind if shit you started seeing more and more of on reddit as the end vitrification started.

[–] AlexanderTheDead 3 points 2 days ago

What?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

"We did it, Lemmy!"

[–] Gradually_Adjusting 22 points 4 days ago

Morally equivalent to slapping a stranger IMO. Maybe worse.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is probably against the rules, right? Can anyone confirm? If so it should be reported and taken down.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Yeah, if the post is not OOP's own document and not given permission from the document's owner, then it breaks Lemmy.world's terms. However if it is, then OOP should know better than to post a photo of their personal ID on a public forum.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

[email protected], not c/[email protected].

[–] HappySkullsplitter 10 points 4 days ago

I've seen this happen on reddit so many times over the years

[–] homesweethomeMrL 6 points 4 days ago

Not cool, Cunningham.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

eh. They kind of doxxed themselves. The Lemmites just made it obvious.

That's a fun thread though. Thanks for linking to it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is sort of a bad take. I get your point, but just because someone posts a little bit of information about themselves doesn't give you free reign to get all associated information and dump it.

For example, the owner of properties is public information. If you knew someone's name, you could reasonably find their address, or at least narrow it down a ton. That doesn't make it okay to post someone's address because they shared their name.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

just because someone posts a little bit of information about themselves doesn't give you free reign to get all associated information and dump it

I get where you're coming from. And you're right - the ideal scenario would be some polite private messages telling the poster to take their stuff down.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They doxxed themself and the Lemmy users doxxed them too

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A veritable double doxxing

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It's like when someone is already blackout drunk through their own poor decisions, and then you hand them another beer instead of a glass of water. Everyone gets to be at fault for that situation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Can I get another beer?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Just so long as I don't have to clean up after.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Assuming it's their ID? doesn't matter if they say so

[+] [email protected] -10 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Ehh, this is an upload of a document filled with personal info that was intentionally shared. Not a big deal imo, if Lemmings weren't going to do it, someone else would have.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

if Lemmings weren't going to do it, someone else would have.

This argument falls flat because if nobody does it, then nobody does it. It's not okay to do something wrong just because you believe it's likely someone else will later.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Yeah I'll admit it's a shitty argument. Personally it's more that I do think it is wrong to post other people's IDs, but I don't think it's wrong to explain what the clearly visible numbers of a document mean, it's not hidden information like EXIF data or other things that require a lot of sleuthing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

It's okay to do something wrong just because you believe it's likely someone else will later.

Capitalism 101

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

It would be very cool if Lemmy was better than places like 4chan

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

"other people litter here, so I can too"

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago

someone else would have.

"someone" can do it on a corpo server ;)

[+] [email protected] -17 points 4 days ago (2 children)

That moment when people attack me in a similar way, and they insist "our judgment is sound and we're credible", but then something like this happens to someone else more profoundly. Proof that verdict by the masses isn't so infallible and that sometimes invalidations are themselves invalid. I'm going to bring this up from now on whether this happens to remind some of them that their approach to these things is so unspecial that so much as an analogy could challenge it. If even a single aspect of something isn't open to discussion/verification that doesn't involve ganging up on them, it renders the plaintiffs' concerns problematic.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ew.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 3 days ago

Something wrong (aside from the typo)?

[–] Brunbrun6766 6 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Are you mentally ill? Your linked post there and this make me think you need professional help

[–] [email protected] -5 points 3 days ago

How so?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They have an empathy problem. They don't make their posts readable because they don't think of how others will read it. They called someone a Japanese homophobic slur because they don't think of how others will take their words. They don't apologise because they don't think of how they've hurt others. It's not a medical issue, it's a personality issue. They'd get as much benefit from a spiritual guru as from a therapist. Both would just tell them to think about other people's feelings.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 3 days ago

You don't think I apologized? I did, feeling guilty and being encouraged to manifest that in the form of an apology by others I spoke to (as there are different ways to manifest guilt), and the person I apologized to forgave me, out of their own free will, and we have been friends for two years ever since, with no notable conflicts with each other. It was some of the onlookers who said it was invalid, as if they had anymore authority to decide that, and it's outright resorting to lying now to say I never apologized. Imagine if the apology was formed according to their vision of how it should look, and the person I was apologizing to was the one who didn't accept it. My friend matters to me, all of him and his alters, and I'd defend him to the death against a hostile mob, and it's not like I don't think of that when questioned en masse about him.

I see how others approach things and am ready to chalk it up to a "they think differently from me" type of matter, so it's disturbing in a way to see they in turn see so much as how someone phrases their issues (which in my case is cultural, neurodivergent, and a matter of trying to include every point) and decide to chalk their differences up to "she has a disorder" type of matter. Hypothetically, if you ask me, if there was any situation where someone with a distorted mind who believed in their ideas was in a kerfuffle with a non-distorted individual (or more than one such individual) who believed the ends justified the means, easily I'd side against the latter, especially after instances like in the original message which challenges the idea that appeal to emotion or appeal to the masses can point to a good argument (for example, people bring up "empathy" as if we're supposed to depend on it for everything). Some undertones are just ethical, and nobody can fully make the case someone is "overjustifying" if nobody will even interview both sides.