Phone calls and apps with unsolicited advice. Threatening language in case you don’t respond. From scratch. What seems? Strangers have shared your phone number on social media with a request to call. It’s called doxing. It happens to MP Eline Vedder of the CDA.
An agricultural agreement was negotiated for months. The cabinet, farmers’ and nature organisations, they were all involved. But a week ago, LTO left the consultation. Insufficient steps have been taken to offer farmers and market gardeners prospects and income security. The result: the agricultural agreement collapses, farmers are dissatisfied. The CDA is seen by several people in the agricultural sector as the party that can pull the plug from the cabinet. To put extra pressure on it, the telephone numbers of CDA MPs are posted on social media.
Vedder reports on Twitter that she receives “non-stop telephone and apps” in which she would receive “advice”. And what happens if she doesn’t follow the advice. ‘Pretty sick’ she is of it.
It is not very difficult to find Vedder’s telephone number. It’s just on the internet, on the site of the CDA Drenthe. Not a rooster crowing. At least, until recently. But how different is that now.
Because you can imagine that it is not nice if your telephone number is shared on the internet. And it gets even more annoying when people call you and give you unsolicited advice. As soon as threats come along, you’re done with it. “A call for mass intimidation means that I now have to consider becoming more difficult to reach,” said the Drenthe farmer’s wife in the House of Representatives.
Unsolicited sharing of privacy-sensitive information on the internet, known as doxing in English, is not prohibited. At least not yet. The House of Representatives is working on a law to ban this phenomenon.
That’s not a bad idea either. Although doxing has been around as long as the internet has been around, this phenomenon took off especially during corona time. Posting home addresses and phone numbers of people you don’t agree with can be quite intimidating.
Can you prevent your data from being placed on the internet? That is difficult. Our years of internet use have left traces all over the world wide web. The best way is to be as anonymous as possible on the internet and to set your privacy settings on social media in such a way that little or nothing of you can be found there. In addition, make sure your passwords are secure and change them regularly.
Is that sufficient? That’s hard to say. Perhaps a ban on publishing private information in combination with strict penalties will solve something. That is being worked on, and the Senate will talk about it soon. But how are the police and the Public Prosecution Service going to enforce a new law, if they already have almost no capacity to deal with the current problems.
For Eline Vedder, it is a matter of waiting for the storm to blow over. It is difficult to change your phone number as a politician if others can find you on it. Get your number off the internet? Rather not. It is precisely the power of a politician to be in contact with the people.
Mark Rutte on doxing and the future law: