Cornell University Library

Digital Scholarship Guides

Self-defense Against Digital Harassment

Introduction: Individual and Collective Harms

You can’t prevent harassment campaigns, but you can take proactive steps to reduce the potential harm of an attack, should you become a target. This guide contains resources to help. It is designed to accompany workshops offered by Cornell librarians. For assistance applying any of the tips in the guide, or to arrange a workshop or consultation, write to cul-privacy@cornell.edu.

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 bear in mind that the ultimate goal of harassment campaigns is to undermine and delegitimize higher education and public trust in academic expertise overall. 

Part I: Doxing Self-Defense

1. Find what’s out there

  • Google your name. Google your name + “address” (not your actual address, but the word “address.”) Google your name + “phone number.”

  • Search for old handles or usernames that you’ve used on social media or forum discussions.

  • Repeat for close family members, or others you want to protect, especially if they share an address with you.

2. Remove your data from public-facing broker sites

Option A: DIY

  • Repeat the process every 6-12 months, and after any big life event that might create new data, like moving house The process will be faster every time you do it!
Option B: Hire a Service
  • If you don’t want to do all the work yourself, consider hiring a service like DeleteMe.

3. Decide what to keep & what to ditch

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

  • Incorrect information. Consider leaving alone some outdated information if it is useful for misdirection and poses no harm. 

4. Curate your social media content

  • Clean out old or irrelevant posts. Delete old social media accounts and discussion forum accounts you don’t use anymore. On active accounts, decide whether to clean out old posts after they reach a certain age, or keep them.

  • Ask social media friends for help. If photos or information about you appears on friends’ pages, ask them to take down anything you don’t want to be public.
Automated Tools for Managing Social Media
  • The free tool Cyd lets you back up old posts from X and then delete them or migrate them to Bluesky.

  • The Block Party app will review all privacy settings on multiple social media platforms, untag you from other people’s photos and posts, let you proactively block known bad actors, and quarantine harassing messages. Basic functions are free, pay for additional automations.

5. Remove Content from Top Search Results

  • Request Google search results be removed. Some information — like content posted by bad actors (e.g. “watchlists”) — can’t be removed from the Web completely. But you CAN ask Google to remove it from its search results, especially if personal information is involved. This will make the content harder to find, especially for casual searchers using Google. You can also do this for any data broker results that you can’t get removed by contacting the company directly.

  • Push Google search results down. Good new content can help push bad content further down in the results list. Make sure there is plenty of quality, recent information out there about you available online on websites ranked highly on the Google algorithm. For example: intentionally curated social media profiles, content on any page with a .edu domain, news articles, press releases.

  • Get help from a comms pro. Consider asking your college’s or unit’s university relations contact to help with the creation of content on the cornell.edu domain that will help push other hits down in search rankings.

Background reading on doxing self-defense

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 

Part II: Secure Your Accounts

Ideally, each of your accounts will have a unique, hard-to-guess password. Get a third-party password manager, and let it create and store the bulk of your passwords.

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

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

1. Important things to do first

  • Update your software as soon as prompted. Those annoying automated messages you get about updating your software and your operating system on your devices? Those updates often have security patches for known vulnerabilities. So install those updates asap.

2. Choose and maintain a third-party password manager

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

Here are three easy-to-use options:

Bitwarden

Pros: Open source. Well-designed and easy to use. Free for individuals. The only password manager that offers free sharing of passwords among two-person families.

Cons: Slightly less user-friendly than 1Password

Cost: Free for one person. $20/year for two people sharing an account, $50/year for up to 6 people sharing an account.

Proton Pass

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

We haven’t evaluated Proton’s usability.

Cost: Core services are free for individuals. $60/year for families.

1Password

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.

Problems setting up your password manager?
Come to Digital CoLab drop-in hours!
or
Make an appointment: digitalcolab@cornell.edu

2. Remember-able passwords for your most important accounts

Keep some passwords out of your password manager (including the passwords for your password manager itself!)

These important passwords/passphrases should be:

  • Long
  • Easy to remember
  • Hard to guess

They do NOT need:

How to create a long, hard-to-guess password:

3. Multi-Factor authentication

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

The easiest and often default MFA 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 if possible. But SMS is still much more secure than no MFA! 

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

Part III: Encrypted Communications

Instant Messaging
Collaborative Writing on Shared Documents
Email

Part IV: More Considerations

1. Personal websites

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

If you use a dynamic content management system (CMS), e.g. WordPress, 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. 

2. 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.

3. 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

Make a Plan in Advance: Prepare in case of a campaign

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.

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.

Resources for Administrators 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

Another model message of support from a university president, Stanford University, November 2021.

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

Understanding Harassment

A collection of essays, research, and journalism.

This reading list has not yet been fully updated for developments in 2025.

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. 

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

Our sources

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. 

Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Digital Security Guides & Resources
Includes timely posts on new and emerging digital security issues.

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

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

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

AAUP’s What You Can Do About Targeted Online Harassment

Our brilliant colleagues and collaborators at Library Freedom Project

Get help

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

on this page