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Introduction: Individual and Collective Harms

It’s easy to mistake coordinated harassment as a problem affecting only individuals, since the immediate purpose of these attacks is to silence, humiliate, and isolate individual researchers.

But the larger goal of harassment campaigns is to undermine and delegitimize higher education and public trust in academic expertise, with a particular focus on “high prestige” institutions. 

Attacks on Academic Freedom: Understanding the Current Landscape

America’s Censored Classrooms 2024: Refining the Art of Censorship.
A report from PEN America, October 2024

Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education
Isaac Kamola. A report from the AAUP’s Center for Academic Freedom, May 2024.

Against the Common Sense: Academic Freedom as a Collective Right  
E. Cherniavsky,  Journal of Academic Freedom. 2021
Academic freedom itself is often viewed as an individual right – the right of individual faculty to speak freely. But Cherniavsky usefully reframes academic freedom as the collective right of the faculty of a department, discipline, and/or institution to set academic standards, determine the quality of one another’s academic work, define the boundaries of a discipline, determine what academic topics are taught, and more. 

For more journalism, research, and essays, see the section Understanding Harassment, below. 

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Doxing Self-Defense: An Action Plan

Find What’s Out There 

• Google your name. Google your name + “address.” Google your name + “phone number.”
  Then try those searches with a non-tracking search engine like DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Brave Search, or Qwant
• Search for your old handles, usernames, social media profiles.
• Search for yourself in a facial recognition database. You will need to update a photo of yourself. 
• Repeat for close family members, or others you want to protect, especially if they share an address with you.

Remove Your Data from Public-Facing Broker Sites

Option A: DIY

Use one of these guides:

• Big Ass Data Broker Opt Out List , Yael Grauer 
• IntelTechniques’ Data Removal Guide, Michael Bazzell

Option B: Hire a Service

• First, review the pros and cons: Services That Delete Your Data from People-Search Sites Don’t Work Very Well, Study Finds (Consumer Reports, Aug. 24, 2024)
• Then, consider hiring a service like DeleteMe

Control Your Social Media Content

More Public Info To Consider

• Do you want your office address available on the campus website? Photo? If not, ask for them to be taken down.

• Consider leaving some old information up if it is useful for misdirection and poses no harm. 

There Is Some Stuff You Can’t Clean Up Yourself

Sites like Canary Mission, Professor Watchlist, and Keywiki exist in order to make it easier for harassers to target faculty. Generally, there’s no way to have your information removed from these websites, but you can request that Google remove search results that include your personal information from its rankings. Results of these requests may vary, depending on how Google moderators interpret them, but it’s worth a try. 

Another way to push down harasser-created material in search results is to make sure there is plenty of good, recent information out there about you on high-quality websites. In other words, good content can help push down bad content further down in the results list. Examples of “good content” that will rank high in search results include: well-curated social media profiles, your Cornell faculty page, news articles and press releases. You might consider asking your college’s or unit’s university relations contact to help. 

Remember that you do not control any data about your digital activities and communication that is created on an employer-owned device, or with employer-licensed software, such as Zoom, Box, Microsoft 365, etc. Data created by these platforms lives forever.

Background Reading on Data Brokers

Public-Facing Data Brokers

I Shared My Phone Number. I Learned I Shouldn’t Have. (B. Chen, NYTimes. Aug. 15, 2019.)

On the Failures of “Anonymized” Data

Where Even the Children Are Being Tracked (C. Warzel & S. Thompson, NYTimes. Dec. 21, 2019)

Phone Apps

The Loophole That Turns Your Apps Into Spies (C. Warzel, NYTimes. Sept. 24, 2019)
Who Is Policing the Location Data Industry? (A. Ng & J. Keegan,,The Markup. Feb. 24, 2022)

How Your Data Gets Passed Around 

Play the Data Dealer Game

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Secure Your Accounts

Ideally, each of your accounts will have a unique, hard-to-guess password. Creation and storage of most of these passwords are best left to a password manager.

But for your most important accounts, you may want to create your own memorable, strong passwords, and keep them out of your password manager. You may also want to enable two-factor authentication for these most important accounts. 

Don’t forget to create a strong, memorable password for your password manager itself!

Have I Been Pwned? A safe, free tool that allows you to see if your email address(es) has been a username in any known credential hacks.

DeHashed — #FreeThePassword A more explicit version of HaveIBeenPwned. It will show leaked passwords, credit card information, and other details. This is a site regularly used by harassers to find information.

Create Strong Passwords

How to Create Strong Passwords, Electronic Freedom Foundation (2021)

Choose and Maintain a 3rd-Party Password Manager

Why You Need a Password Manager. Yes, You., A. Cunningham (2021). Wirecutter: The New York Times

Choose a password manager, and install it on all your devices. Here are three easy-to-use options:

Bitwarden

• Bitwarden Sign Up
• Official Help Docs
• An unofficial video introduction

ProsOpen source. Well-designed and easy to use. Free for individuals.

Cons: Slightly less user-friendly than 1Password

Cost Free for up to 2 individuals sharing an account. $40/year for families larger than two.

Proton Pass

• Proton Pass Sign Up

ProsOpen source. Free for individuals. If you use other Proton tools (like Proton Mail or Proton VPN), Proton Pass will integrate well. 

Cons: We haven’t yet evaluated Proton Pass for usability, but we’ve heard good reports.

Cost Free for individuals. $60/year for families.

1Password

• 1Password Sign Up
• Official Help Docs

Pros:The absolute simplest to use, in our opinion.

Cons: No free tier

Cost: $36/yr for individuals, $60/yr for families

LastPass

Cornell offers a free Enterprise LastPass account to students, staff, and faculty. This account offers family sharing and other advanced features. If you are already using LastPass, and like it, great! It is a much more secure option than not using a password manager. It’s also great if you want free access to a family password manager.

That said, LastPass isn’t our favorite password manager. It is currently owned by private equity sponsors, which sometimes signals that quality and security may be de-prioritized in multiple ways. And in fact, LastPass suffered a security breach in late 2022, the only password manager that is known to have been breached in this way. In addition, LastPass software is based on closed-source code, which in general is less secure than open-source code. Finally, be aware that when you leave Cornell (unless as emeritus faculty), your enterprise LastPass account will convert to a free personal account, without family sharing capability and other advanced features.  

Setting Up Your Password Manager

If you already have password instructions stored in a browser, look for instructions on how to “import passwords” from your browser into your new password manager. 

After importing your passwords, delete them from your browser, and turn off any automatic saving features.

Enable Multi-Factor Authentication

For your most important or most sensitive accounts, consider enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) with an authenticator app, a hardware token — or both, which lets each act as a backup for the other.

The easiest and often default 2FA method is plain text SMS. But this is also the least secure method, as a determined adversary can spoof your phone number if they know it, and intercept plain SMS texts. That’s why we recommend an authenticator app or hardware token. 

Authenticator Apps

Authenticator apps are free for individual end users (like you) because their profit comes from the tech companies that pay for them to be compatible with their sites, and by enterprise customers (like Cornell).

Authenticator apps explained: There’s a Better Way to Protect Yourself from Hackers and Identity Thieves, S. Morrison (2021). Vox recode.

You probably already use one authenticator app — Duo Mobile — to access your Cornell account. Follow these instructions to add additional third-party accounts to Duo Mobile.

Authy is another free and trustworthy authenticator app. 
Some 3rd-party password managers also offer authenicator apps. 

Authentication with a Hardware Token

A hardware token is the most secure form of 2FA. It’s a small physical item that looks slightly like a thumb drive. Keep it with you — on your keychain, for example — and plug it into your device’s USB or Lightning drive when you need authentication. It’s particularly useful if you need 2FA access when you don’t have reliable cellular service, or if you use burner phones.

Hardware tokens explained: Simplify and Secure Your Online Accounts with a Yubikey, J Colt (2018). WIRED.

The Yubikey is the most popular brand of authenticator hardware token

Personal Websites

If you maintain a personal website, use a contact form rather than publishing your personal email address.

If you have a personal website, be sure to keep security patches updated. Or, build your site using a static site generator; static sites are more resistant to denial-of-service attacks and other attempts to cause harm. Talk to Digital CoLab staff for help with building a static site. 

Your Academic Work

Be aware that your email correspondence with colleagues at state universities may be obtained and published via public records requests.

If you maintain a profile on a third-party host of preprints/postprints, be cautious with commercial surveillance sites such as Academia and ResearchGate. Instead, consider repositories and networks built, owned, and maintained by scholarly communities, such as OrcID, ArXiv, Humanities Commons, eCommons, or others in your field. 

When a library database vendor pushes you to create an account while using it, avoid doing so, unless you have a specific reason for wanting to do so. 

Consider adding a copyright statement to your syllabus that prohibits students’ posting course materials publicly. This Faculty Senate page offers suggested language. If you find your work posted on third party sites, you can request removal. Cornell Library Copyright Services offers a guide for finding re-posted course material and requesting its removal.

Early Warning System

Set up a Google alert for your name, so that you will have a heads-up if you become a target.

Proactively request colleagues and family not share your contact information, schedule, or other personal details with cold callers or e-mailers. Speak with:

• Departmental faculty and staff
• Anyone who is connected with your name in your academic work
• Anyone (usually family members or roommates) who you find linked to you in data-broker records

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Make a Plan in Advance:
How You Will Respond in the Event of an Attack

Some questions to consider before an attack:

• Is there a friend you would trust to screen your email for you, so that you don’t have to read the messages in the moment? Talk to them in advance.

• Will you want to save abusive materials in order to have documentation later? What kind of system might work best for that, for you and/or for your email screener?

• Who in your personal or professional networks could you tap to report social media abuse? Threatening posts have a better chance of being taken down if reported by someone other than the target.

• Consider starting a conversation with colleagues in your unit, department, lab, or other group about the collective harm of targeted and network harassment. As a group, consider whether and how you might respond collectively to cases of sustained and severe harassment.

• Consider contacting Cornell Health’s Victim Advocacy Program for mental health and other support.

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Collective Harms & Collective Responses

It’s important to remember that, while the largest burden of targeted or networked harassment is borne by individuals, the goal of such harassment is to discredit and delegitimize higher education, the academy, the research process, academic freedom, and academic institutions collectively.

Therefore, the problem can never be solved by individual responses alone. Here are some resources to consider if you are planning collective defenses with your department, professional organization, or other group. 

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), informed by years of research and practice, recommends clear and forceful condemnations of harassment and intimidation from institutions, boards, and faculties, individually and collectively.

How Should Administrators Respond to a Campus Reform Story? I. Kamola, Faculty First Responders Project

“Academic Outrage: When the Culture Wars Go Digital” [blog post], T. MacMillan Cottom, 2017. 

A Model Public Message in Support of Targeted Faculty Member , Syracuse University, Sept. 2021

Against the Common Sense: Academic Freedom as a Collective Right  E. Cherniavsky,  Journal of Academic Freedom. 2021

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Understanding Harassment

A collection of essays, research, and journalism.

First-person Accounts by Targeted Academics

Confronting Anti-Asian Racism: A Statement on (In)visibility and Online Targeted Harassment, R. Esmail (2021), Up//root.

A Statement Concerning My Public Talks This Week, K. Taylor, posted on Facebook by Haymarket Books, 2017.

“Are You Willing to Die For This Work?” Public Targeted Online Harassment in Higher Education: SWS [Sociologists for Women in Society] Presidential Address, A. L. Ferber (2018), Gender & Society 32(3).

US-based Far-right 

Data Snapshot: Whom Does Campus Reform Target and What Are the Effects? H. Tiede, et.al., American Association of University Professors Reports & Publications. Spring 2021

Sensationalized Surveillance: Campus Reform and the Targeted Harassment of Faculty S. McCarthy & I. Kamola, New Political Science. Nov. 2021

A Billionaire-Funded Website with Ties to the Far-Right Is Trying to “Cancel” University Professors A. Speri, The Intercept. April 2021

Guide: Faculty First Responders: Understand Right Wing Attacks on Faculty, from political scientist Isaac Karmola

Science-denialism

In the Line of Fire  C. O’Grady, Science, March 2022
On the networked harassment of scientists, particularly those working on COVID-19 research.

Foreign Affairs

Under Fire from Hindu Nationalist Groups, U.S.-based Scholars of South Asia Worry About Academic Freedom N. Masih, The Washington Post, Oct. 3, 2021

“They Don’t Understand the Fear We Have”: How China’s Long Reach of Repression Undermines Academic Freedom at Australia’s Universities Human Rights Watch, June 30, 2021

Guide: Hindutva Harassment Field Manual, from the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective

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Our Sources & Further Reading

Equality Labs’ Anti-Doxing Guide for Activists
Equality Labs is a South Asian Dalit civil rights organization. One of their priorities is research and teaching on digital security. 

Privacyguides.org
Trustworthy recommendations and analysis for a wide range of digital software, including browsers, search engines, password managers, VPNs, email services, and more. 

PEN America’s Online Harassment Field Manual and Digital Safety Snacks
PEN America supports journalists and writers. 

Faculty First Responders: Understanding Right-Wing Attacks on Faculty
A peer-to-peer faculty collective founded by political scientist Isaac Kamola

AAUP’s Statement on Targeted Online Harassment of Faculty (2017) 

AAUP’s What You Can Do About Targeted Online Harassment 

Researcher Support Consortium
Includes a Toolkit for Institutions to support researchers who are under attack or threat of attack. 

Our brilliant colleagues and collaborators at Library Freedom Project

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Get Help

Have questions about any of the above? We’re here to collaborate as you plan, implement, and troubleshoot. Email us anytime: DigitalCoLab at cornell.edu.edu.