Hallow Skybunker, Hallow City, Hallow 12

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High Security Chamber

Dear Mr. H. Tzu

“Doxxing”, Legality, an d Trust: The Dama ge of False ccusations

Considering social interaction, no matter how finely or coarsely one chooses to analyze the subject, is an endeavour that anyone would struggle to undertake without considering their own personal experiences. Grey notes that social interaction is a site for the development of our dispositions and ways of acting and seeing the world (Gray & Morton, 28). In this manner, the constituent relationships we share with others and the interactions that lie therein work strongly to influence the way we interact with the world around us. Entailed by this is the strong influence our reputations

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both self-assigned and as perceived by others

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have on our interactive experiences. Izuma, Matsumoto, et al. note that as humans, we maintain a motivation to improve our social

standing “that depends on our ability to represent what other people think of us”

(Izuma, Matsumoto, et. al, 2) and lying at the intersection of our preoccupation with the social standing we maintain and the increasingly digital world we live in are the challenges and opportunities a digital environment can pose in reputation management. Vareschi works to demonstrate how technological shifts have affected the concept of anonymity across various media (Vareschi, 177) while Tverdek demonstrates that our perceptions of digital anonymity are often exaggerated (Tverdek, 198). The reality likely lies somewhere in between, as our experiences with an increasingly digital environment invite the potential of more varied and intimate interactions with a limitless group of individuals unbound by physical space while also offering more frequent potential for misrepresentation of self.

“Doxxing” in itself—a verbification of “dox”, or “documents”—

refers to the act of using a digital medium to ascertain personal information about others through careful

searching or social engineering. The “dox” themselves are unbounded and are limited only