Privacy watchdog says doxxing weaponized

Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog says it received almost four times as many complaints in 2019 compared to the previous year – with almost half of them related to doxxing, RTHK reports.

Privacy commissioner Stephen Wong Kai-yi said the watchdog received 4,370 doxxing complaints about the unauthorized release of people’s personal information – compared to just 57 for the whole of 2018.

The figure also represents almost half of the record-high 9,182 complaints the body received in 2019.

Wong said this shows how doxxing has been weaponized amid months of anti-government protests in Hong Kong.

“Very often we say we don’t give you our personal data on the basis that it is my own property”, Wong said. “It’s a shield. It’s some sort of a refuge sometimes, and now it has become a weapon – a weapon to attack other people with different views, perhaps.”

The commission received more complaints related to a single incident on December 26 – when a reporter’s Hong Kong Identity Card was held up in front of his own live-streaming camera – than it did annually for each of the previous four years.