wilting-blooming:

To any shippers afraid of being doxxed:

Don’t play games based on personal information! 

I know it’s fun to take the first two letters of your name, the third vowel of your middle name, and the last two letters of your surname, so you can create some fun fantasy name … I know it’s fun to take your birth month and birth date and use them to create your drag name … I know it’s fun to combine your parents’ first names to create your fursona name or whatever, but – 

This is how antis and fraudsters hack and dox.

The fact is there aren’t too many female names starting with “St” or men’s names starting with “Jo”, and then by processing other pieces of information, especially by using other information from other games or trolling social media, it’s not too difficult to work out you’re Stephanie Smith or John Watson. You’re on social media, and they know from that other post you’re born on July 4th, so now they just need a year … hope you’ve not an age on your description header!

Heck, a birth year can also be worked out from Chinese Zodiac, you posting you’re now x age on your birthday, or – again – other meme games that require your birth year. If you play enough of these games, an anti or a fraudster only needs time and patience to piece it all together, and God forbid you ever posted a selfie of yourself, too, especially one in school uniform or work uniform.

This is how they find you.

Just some handy tips for posting:

• Don’t play meme games that use personal information
• Don’t post selfies
• Don’t post photographs outside your work/home
• Don’t post photographs of yourself in uniform
• Don’t post screenshots of your desktop – this can be used to work out OS, browser, and other such things (including sites you use or programmes you may us, depending on what’s open on your page)
• Don’t post your age or personal information on your headers
• Remember nothing is private – chat rooms, direct messages, and anything “private” can be hacked and screenshotted and outed

Just some hints for using the web:

• Try to use apps that hide your IP address
• Try to use VPNs when in doubt about if a blog uses trackers
• NEVER use the same password for all social media accounts
• NEVER use words for your password – mix it up with combinations of letters (lower and upper case), symbols, numbers, etc. 
• Try to use different email accounts for different sites
• DO enable two-step authorisation on all social media accounts
• Keep your virus checker up-to-date
• NEVER open a link that you first haven’t checked out – make sure it’s to a site you trust, from a person you trust, and check it’s “HTTPS” if you are going to enter any details (many fraudsters, antis and one anti-anti have used scams with fake sites to steal log-in information)
• If someone claims to be X, contact X directly – ring your local bank branch, if you get an email about some problem, and contact x’s main blog, if a so-called side claims to be x (always verify identity)