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 * Introduction
 * Recommended Prevention Measures
   * Preventing Doxxing
   * Passwords & Login Security
   * Website Security
   * Social Media
   * Online Gaming Security
   * Physical Mail
   * Miscellaneous
 * Document & Report
 * People-focused Strategies
 * Resources
 * Understanding Online Harassment
 * About Us
 * Press

Last Updated: July 5, 2018

LANGUAGES

 * English

Want to help translate this guide into more languages? Contact us.


SPEAK UP & STAY SAFE(R):

A Guide to Protecting Yourself From Online Harassment

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 * More …

Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t have time to read the whole thing? Start with these
three steps:

 1. Set up two step verification
 2. Create unique, complex passwords
 3. Remove potential doxxing information

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: This guide contains things we’ve learned about how to keep yourself safe
from individuals, loosely organized groups & cybermobs online. If you’re
concerned with attacks from governments, major corporations, or other massively
organized and/or resourced institutions, we recommend this great guide.

This guide is for anyone who fears they might be targeted, or who is already
under attack, for speaking their mind online, but is especially designed for
women, people of color, trans and genderqueer people, and everyone else whose
existing oppressions are made worse by digital violence. It details best
security practices for social media, email, online gaming, website platforms,
and ensuring privacy of personal information online, as well as the
documentation and reporting of harassment, and caring for yourself emotionally
during an online attack. You don’t need any specialized knowledge to use this
guide – just basic computer and internet skills.

The authors of the guide have all been targets of cyber attacks ourselves, so
we’ve written the guide we wish had already existed when the attacks on us
began. We’re all based in the US, but we’ve done our best to make it useful no
matter where you live.

We wish we didn’t have to write this. Going through even some of these steps to
protect your online safety will cost you real time and sometimes money. It’s a
tax on women, people of color, queer and trans people and other oppressed groups
for daring to express our opinions in public.

None of this is fair. It should not be our meticulous labor and precious funds
that keep us safe, it should be our basic humanity. But that has proven
heartbreakingly, maddeningly insufficient more times than we can count. So below
are some of the things that we’ve learned that can help, even though we
shouldn’t have to do any of them. While we fight for a just world, this is the
one we’re living in, and we want to share what we know.

We also want to acknowledge that people with more financial and leisure-based
privilege will have better access to implementing comprehensive strategies — a
structural unfairness that highlights how unjust online harassment is. It’s also
true that none of these are foolproof — you could employ all of these strategies
and still be targeted.

And just to be crystal clear: if someone attacks, harasses or threatens you
online, it’s not your fault, even if you haven’t previously taken any safety
precautions.

It’s never your fault. Never. Ever.


RECOMMENDED PREVENTION MEASURES

Below is a suggested list of steps you can take to protect yourself from those
who may want to silence your voice online through intimidation, harassment,
threats and abuse. It is not a complete or comphrehensive list and we urge you
to also consult online safety resources from The Crash Override Network Resource
Center, A DIY Guide to Feminist Cybersecurity, and TrollBusters, as well as
Violet Blue’s The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy.

Return to Top


PREVENTING DOXXING

Your information is everywhere online. Your name, home and/or work address,
phone number, email address, and other sensitive information is almost surely
posted for public viewing on various websites. This is often how harassers find
the info they use to “dox,” or publish the personal information of their
targets. Often doxxing comes with spoken or unspoken encouragement to use your
personal contact information to escalate the harassment against you or their
target.

There are several “people finder” websites you can check to see what information
of yours is already online. These websites are publicly available databases
where someone can look up a person’s email address, phone number, and physical
address, using their name and any other identifying information. Most of these
sites have the option to remove information, by either formally requesting
removal or by creating an account, logging in, and claiming your listing. It is
good practice to check these sites every six months, because your info can be
re-listed even after you’ve had it removed.

 * Spokeo (to remove listing: http://www.spokeo.com/opt_out/new)
 * Anywho.com (to remove listing: http://www.anywho.com/help/privacy)
 * Intelius (to remove listing: https://www.intelius.com/optout.php)
 * Whitepages (to remove
   listing: https://support.whitepages.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010106908-How-do-I-edit-or-remove-a-personal-listing-)

For more people finder/databroker sites take a look at this list compiled by
TrollBusters.

TIP: Unfortunately, harassers have a tendency to also go after loved ones.
Suggest close family, friends and colleagues take steps to remove personal
information from “people finder” websites as well.

Reputation.com: To protect against doxxing, Reputation.com has a service which
removes your personal information from paid sites, and then monitors them to
make sure your information stays erased. See their website for more information
and fees associated with their service.

TIP: Reverse look up your personal information by google searching your address,
email address or phone number and see where/if it is listed online. Also try
sites like http://www.whitepages.com/reverse_phone, Spokeo or TNID.US.

RESTRICT WHAT YOU SHARE

One free and low-tech way of reducing your risk of doxxing is to restrict what
you share online. Especially consider not mentioning details about where you
live, your current location if you’re traveling, the names of anyone you live
with (those names can be used to find your address), and any information that
can be used in accessing your accounts (so, your maiden name, or anything that
you might use to answer a “security question,” like the name of your childhood
pet, or the street you grew up on.) The less information available about you
online, the less there is available for doxxing. Of course, restricting some of
this information can feel onerous for a variety of reasons, so the balance is up
to you.

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PASSWORDS & LOGIN SECURITY

Passwords are necessary for almost everything we use these days, and they are
crucial in protecting our information online. A few important things to remember
when creating passwords are:

HAVE A LOT OF DIFFERENT PASSWORDS

Ideally, you should have a unique password for each account you own. There may
be more accounts than you think! Here are some types of accounts you may have:
email, bank, credit card, social media, services, apps, petition sites, health
insurance and hospital record websites, municipal and other government sites,
accounts for utilities like water, power and internet, website, hosting and
domain related sites, budgeting sites.

TIP: For additional security, consider using a unique username for each account
as well.

CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS REGULARLY

Try to change your passwords regularly, every 90 days for instance. While it
might be a pain to do, it will keep your information safe in the long run.

USE ONLINE PASSWORD MANAGERS

Apps like 1Password and LastPass create and keep track of highly random
high-security passwords for every account you access online. Anything you use a
password to access online should have a high-security password unique to that
site.

MAKE YOUR PASSWORDS DIFFICULT

Passwords should be long and hard to hack. Good passwords tend to be a mix of
7-15 upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Do not use phone
numbers, birthdays, family member names, or dictionary words in your passwords.
Never share your passwords with anyone – not even your best friend or your
partner — unless it is absolutely necessary. The fewer people who know a
password, the less vulnerable it is. If you do have to share your passwords,
make sure you establish rules so that it’s clear that everyone who has the
passwords is maintaining those passwords in a safe way.

To create new passwords we suggest using an automated password generator like
those that come with a password manager app or sites like Password Generator.
You can also reference the strategy used in this XKCD comic about password
strength.

TIP: Never share your passwords over insecure connections like text messages,
instant message or DM. Some services like LastPass offer secure password
sharing.

DO NOT SAVE YOUR PASSWORDS IN THE CLOUD

In case you get hacked, you don’t want someone getting access to your passwords
in a spreadsheet or other document that is saved on a “cloud” account. “The
cloud” generally refers to any data storage system that’s not on your physical
devices. Google Drive saves everything in the cloud. Dropbox uses cloud storage.
iCloud is the cloud, of course. Steam and xBox have cloud features. You get the
idea. The safest thing to do is to save your passwords in a password-protected
document that lives exclusively on your physical device. For more info on how
the cloud works and what its security flaws are, this is a good explainer.

TIP: Never save your passwords in an insecure spreadsheet or document on your
computer, phone or cloud.

TURN ON 2-STEP VERIFICATION/2-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION

Email, social media, and other sites allow you to turn on 2-step verification
which asks for a code from an app or texts you a number to enter when someone
tries to log in to your account from an unregistered browser or computer. This
page lists current sites with two-factor auth options:
https://twofactorauth.org/

USE SECURITY QUESTIONS

Many sites ask you to create a security question or two which you would answer
in the event that you forget your password. Remember, make the answers difficult
– something only you know and information that cannot be found online or through
your social media platforms. One option would be to create complex
password-style answers for security questions. You can save your security
question answers in a secure password manager to ensure that you don’t forget
them and can access them easily when needed.

EMAIL ADDRESSES

You should have several email addresses and use them for different purposes. You
may want to keep your public email address separate from your personal
communication, and even your business and financial dealings. You may also want
to register as many of the email domains with your name as possible to ensure
that you own them and no one else can use them to pretend to be you; example
yourname@gmail.com, yourname@yahoo.com, yourname@aol.com, yourname@mac.com. If
you own your own domain, you can also set a unique email address for each
account that you can track with a password manager.

TIP: Along with using different passwords, it’s good practice to use different
email addresses for different online accounts. If access is gained on one
account it will make it harder to figure out how to get into the others.

Return to Top


WEBSITE SECURITY

DOMAINS

If you own one or more web domains, your contact information is likely publicly
available via the domain registrar, and WhoIs Search (who.is). Many domain name
registration services offer the option to keep this information private either
for free or with a small fee. Availability of private registration services
depends on the top level domain – for example, .ca has free private
registration, but .us domains cannot be registered privately. Contact the
helpdesk of the company you registered your domain names at for assistance.

COMMENTS ON YOUR SITE

If you have your own site, it’s a good idea to turn off or moderate comments
before they appear on your site. Not only does this cut down on the amount of
spam that appears, but it also ensures that nasty comments and defamatory
statements do not appear on your site. You may also want to have people register
with a commenting account like Disqus (disqus.com) to keep them from simply
spamming your website with hateful comments.

ASK A FRIEND: If your comments are being flooded with slurs and hate, ask a
friend to monitor your site, document any threats, and delete offending
comments.

DDOS ATTACKS

If you run a website, you may want to prepare in advance to guard against DDoS
(Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, a tactic sometimes used to take down a
site. Start by being sure you have the answers to these questions, adapted from
DigitalDefenders.org, long before any attack might arise. You may need these
answers handy if your site goes down for any reason, and you want to use the
GitHub guide (linked to below) to troubleshoot it:

 * Who built your website? Are they available to help in the event your site
   goes down?
 * Who is your web hosting provider? This is the company that provides the
   server where your website lives. If you do not know, you can use a tool like
   thisto help.
 * What is the most efficient way to request help/support from your particular
   host? If you have a webmaster, do they know how to do this?
 * What are your account log in details for this hosting provider?
 * Where did you purchase your domain name? In some cases this is also your
   website host, but it could also be another company.
 * What are the log in details for the domain name service?
 * Who else knows or may have access to these account details? It’s best to keep
   this list as short as possible, and only among well-trusted individuals

You may also want to sign up for a service like CloudFlare or Deflect.ca. These
technologies detect and block new attacks that arise against any website on
their network. And these services are set-it-and-forget-it. Install it once, and
you don’t really have to think about it again. It’s always on, working to keep
your site safe. Deflect.ca is a free service for independent media, human rights
organizations and activists. CloudFlare is a for-profit system which has both
free and paid levels of service. CloudFlare also provides free services for
civil society websites through Project Galileo. Google’s Project Shield is also
available to protect organizations with sites serving media, elections and human
rights related content, if you apply and meet certain (unclear) criteria.

If you suspect you may be under a DDOS attack, this guide from GitHub will walk
you through what to do next.

TIP: Always balance the benefits of any paying service against the additional
risk required in registering your personal and payment information in one more
place online. There’s no right answer — you get to decide what’s worth the risk.

PLUGINS

Be cautious with plugins and widgets because these are an easy way to gain
access to and exploit your website. Only install plugins that are from safe and
trustworthy sources.

For example, if you use WordPress, plugin packs like Jetpack by Automattic (the
creators of WordPress.com) are recommended for services like social media
widgets, comments, contact forms etc.

Consider using a website defense and basic security plugin such as “Protect” in
Jetpack, Wordfence, or Better WP Security and set up an automatic backup such as
VaultPress or Back up Buddy.

Return to Top


SOCIAL MEDIA

Many of us use social media to connect with friends and family, and as a
professional tool as well. Unfortunately, social media is also one of the most
common channels for harassment, abuse and doxxing. There are several steps you
can take to minimize the impact of haters on social media.

TURN OFF GEOLOCATION

Each time you take a photo or post a status, geolocation data is imprinted into
your photos or added to your status update. To keep harassers from locating your
frequent hangouts, and figuring out your home address through the geolocation of
your photos at home, you can turn off the geolocation settings on your phone and
in each app that you use. You also may want to turn off location tagging in
social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and FourSquare. Twitter allows you
to delete all of your historical location data in one click, on the settings
page.

TIP: Having fun with friends and everyone wants to share pictures and updates on
social media? Just ask them to make sure their geolocation data is turned off.

DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO SHARE

What information and photos are available publicly? How would you feel if a
harasser downloaded, photoshopped and turned a photo of yours into a harassing
meme? Do you have a name, which combined with the city you live in or your
birthday, could make it easier for someone to find you or compromise your
accounts? Then consider not revealing your city or birthday. Minimizing the
amount of information that is freely available about you, especially on your
basic and public social media profiles, is going to make you more secure, though
it’s also a sacrifice in that it limits what you can share with your community.
There’s no right or wrong answer about how much to share, but do make the
risk/reward assessment deliberately.

MONITOR YOUR INFORMATION ONLINE

Sometimes bloggers and journalists write posts about us without our knowledge.
It can be important to keep an eye on the information that is on the internet
about you. If you aren’t able to pay for an information monitoring service,
there are plenty of free options, like Google Alerts and Talkwalker Alerts,
which will send you email alerts when your name appears online. Also consider
setting up Google Alerts on any common nicknames you have, common misspellings
of your name, as well as your phone number and your street address, to monitor
if anyone is sharing these publicly. Because these programs are free, they
aren’t perfect, but they are still pretty accurate and useful.

ASK A FRIEND: You can set up alerts to be sent to a trusted friend who can
monitor them for you.

Another way to monitor your name is to put it into a search column in Tweetdeck
or other Twitter program. These programs will notify you if someone tweets your
name without tagging you.

Images and Photos

Every once in a while, you may want to do an Internet search of yourself to see
what images appear on various search engines. If there is a particular photo you
are concerned about you can do a reverse images search with sites like Google
Images or Tineye where you upload an image and they run a search for it across
indexed sites on the web. This can be helpful in monitoring your unwanted online
presence.

TIP: Be mindful of EXIF data that is embedded in images. Photos taken on mobile
devices often contain lat/long coordinates. You can use a site like Jeffrey’s
EXIF viewer to reveal that information.

OWN YOUR NAMESPACE

If you can, try to secure accounts in your name on every major platform, even
ones you don’t intend to use, to make it harder for anyone to pretend to be you.
Should you need to take a break from a social media account you already own, do
not delete your account. Make it private or deactivate it if those options are
available – the risk in deleting your account is that others can claim your
handle and use it against you. To take your much needed break, simply delete the
app from your device and turn off the email notifications.

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Every social media platform has its own set of security options and concerns. To
make matters more complicated, those options can change with little notice. For
a guide to what your options are and how to think about them on some of the
major platforms, we recommend this guide produced by Take Back The Tech.  In
addition, this NNEDV guide specifically designed to help survivors of intimate
partner violence navigate Facebook is also really great. Also consider taking a
look at this list of questions from Gender and Tech Resources to help determine
which social media platforms you want to use.

The right balance of security settings is up to you. The important thing is to
make informed decisions about what works for you. We also recommend you re-check
your settings and these guides every 6 months or so, in order to keep up with
changes the companies may make.

 

Facebook Pages

If you have a public persona, you may also want to create a public Facebook page
which allows people who want to follow your work to do so on your terms. Similar
to an organizational page, this public page allows you to post article and
updates, and you can direct people there if you don’t want them to be your
personal “friends” on Facebook. There are several approaches to managing the
friend/fan line on Facebook, as outlined in this great post from Deanna Zandt.

Twitter Blocking & Muting

Blocking and muting on Twitter can be done on a case by case basis. We
understand (all too well) that when you are being attacked by a mob it is nearly
impossible to block everyone sending you nasty and/or threatening messages but
these are some rudimentary tools available to you. Blocking will remove tweets
from a harassing account from your timeline and stop that person from seeing
your Twitter account when they are logged in. Muting will just stop you from
seeing an account’s tweets in your timeline but that account will never be
notified.

ASK A FRIEND: Consider delegating access to a trusted friend through an app such
as TweetDeck and having them block or mute abusive accounts on your behalf.

Twitter offers shareable block lists that can help preemptively block
potentially harassing accounts so you don’t see those messages in your mentions.
You can share and use friend’s block lists directly on Twitter.

Third party apps like Block Together allow you to install the app and, by
sharing block lists, automatically block other Twitter users whom people you
trust have decided should be blocked. It also gives you the option to block new
users from tweeting at you, which can be helpful for avoiding attacks by “sock
puppet” accounts of users you’ve blocked but who’ve created new accounts in
order to get around those blocks.

Return to Top


ONLINE GAMING SECURITY

There are a number of security steps that can be taken to protect your privacy
and security when gaming online, some of which overlap with suggestions
throughout the rest of this document. You can, of course, implement some or all
of the following recommendations to best suit your specific needs.

PASSWORDS & TWO-FACTOR AUTH

See “Passwords & Login Security” section.

GAMERTAG/HANDLE/ONLINE ID

Use different gamertags for each platform (XBOX, PSN, Steam, Battle.net etc).
Your gamertags should be distinct and different on each account, (this also
includes login names for various other online accounts as well like social media
sites). If one account is compromised, it will be more difficult to find your
other gaming accounts. Avoid using similar names on multiple accounts:
AppleSauce54 on XBOX and AppleySaucey54 on Battle.net for example are easy to
link together. Many people want uniformity with their gamertags so friends can
find each other easily, so this is a suggestion for a high level of security.

PROFILE

Avoid using information or photos that reveal personal details about yourself.
Do not answer security questions with real answers. Responses should be
impossible to guess or impossible to look up online (avoid animal names,
partner’s names, school names, street addresses etc). You could use passwords to
answer security questions and store those in a password manager for easy access.
Avoid using your real birthday.

EMAIL ADDRESS

Use unique email addresses for each account (or using a couple of email
addresses for different gaming accounts). This can help make it more difficult
to access all your gaming profiles if one account is compromised.

PRIVACY SETTINGS

Most online gaming systems offer a selection of privacy settings, some more than
others. Look through preferences/settings regarding:

 * Automatic or sign in each time login
 * Who can see when you are online
 * Who can see what you are playing
 * Who can send you voice and text communications
 * Who can send you friend requests
 * Who can see your profile
 * Who can see your gaming history
 * Who can see your friend’s list
 * Who can see your game clips
 * Settings regarding uploading game clips to online servers
 * Sharing gaming content to social networks
 * Requests to join multiplayer games
 * Adding and blocking friends
 * Who can see your real name

LIVESTREAMING GAMES

If you livestream games on Twitch they offer some limited security setting
options allowing you to block embedding or sharing of your videos, block
messages from strangers, and block invites from strangers. When streaming ask a
few friends or trusted colleagues to moderate your twitch chat for you.

YouTube recently introduced a games focused livestreaming service. We will
update this guide once we have more information on their safety options.

DOWNLOADS

Only download games, game saves, cheats, mods or other content from reputable
and secure sources. Suspicious or unknown files may contain viruses, malware,
and spyware.

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PHYSICAL MAIL

While physical mail has decreased significantly we probably still get quite a
bit of mail and packages sent to our homes. Consider an alternative options like
a P.O. Box or Virtual Mailbox and/or consider using an alias or pseudonym when
receiving mail to your home.

POST OFFICE BOX

If you can, get a PO Box and have all of your non-personal mail, including
bills, catalogs, magazines, etc., to the PO Box. That way, if your address is
bought or sold, or if someone manages to access one of your accounts, they won’t
have your street address. We suggest having your P.O. Box a reasonable distance
away from your home or work – ideally not in the same zip code, or even town if
that’s possible – so it’s not easy to guess where you live based on your PO Box
address.

VIRTUAL MAILBOX

Another option is a virtual mailbox. These are companies that assign customers
an address and unique mailbox number. They are often located in a different city
(or even state) and they will scan your mail and/or send it to you. Virtual
Mailboxes tend to cost more than P.O. Boxes and charge for scans and mailings.

TIP: Consider purchasing a paper shredder for any documents or packing labels
with your name, address, and other sensitive information listed.

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MISCELLANEOUS

USE A GOOGLE VOICE NUMBER

In the United States, you can get a free secondary number via Google Voice and
have it ring to whatever phone you want. This allows you to avoid giving out
your actual number. You can also block callers via Google Voice, and have your
voicemails transcribed into your inbox. A good policy if your number IS doxxed,
or if you’re concerned about harassing calls: don’t pick up the phone for
numbers you don’t know. They’ll be much less encouraged if they don’t get you,
and then you can just block their number after the first call and never hear
from them again. Poof!

PEN NAMES

A pen name is a pseudonym that a writer publishes under to protect their true
identity. This can be a complete different name or a name based off of your
given name. If you are worried about being doxxed or losing your privacy,
especially if you have an uncommon first and last name combination, you may want
to weigh your options when it comes to a pen name. (This is most likely to be a
realistic option if you’re just beginning your professional career, or starting
a new project unrelated to your current professional life.) You can make up a
name, perhaps your first name and an old family last name, a pseudonym based on
your work, or a made up name all together. For more information on using your
real name versus a pseudonym, check out this guide from Gender and Tech
Resources.

CAMERA SECURITY

Covering webcams when they are not in use is a good idea in case someone gains
access to the camera on your computer or mobile device. You can easily cover the
camera on your computer with a sticker or a post it note (choose one that is
easily removable so you can still have access to your camera). There are more
sophisticated covers such as C-Slide and SpiShutter.

VIDEO AND TEXT CHAT

If you think you might be dealing with sophisticated hackers, you may want to
consider which apps you use for video calls and for chat. Skype in particular
has some known security flaws that can be used to spy on or locate you, and
Hangout isn’t much better. More secure options include Facetime, Talky.io, and
Appear.

For chat security, choose apps like CryptoCat or ChatSecure, which have much
better security than more popular items like Facebook, Gchat (even “off the
record”), SnapChat & What’s App. For more on chat security, check out EFF’s
Secure Messaging Scorecard.

PHYSICAL DEVICE SECURITY

Depending on your situation, you may also want to make sure that your physical
devices: your phone, laptop, tablet, etc., can’t be used against you if they
fall into the wrong hands. Here’s a great guide on how to do that. Some of it,
like passwords, we’ve covered here, but skim through and you’ll find some great
new advice. You may also want to check out this guide to Encrypting Your Laptop
Like You Mean It.

TIP: Always activate and use a password on your phones, tablets, laptops, and
other devices.

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DOCUMENT & REPORT

DOCUMENTING

Documenting and saving the harassment sent to you via Twitter, Facebook, email
and other social media can prove useful especially if you decide to pursue legal
action and/or report to law enforcement. Most computer operating systems have a
default screen capture system such as Windows and Mac or you can use a
downloadable app like Skitch or OneNote.

REPORTING TO SOCIAL MEDIA

Most online social media sites have their own abuse reporting tool. Follow the
guides they provide to report abuse on their platforms. Here are a links for
more information provided by a few of the biggest sites:

 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * YouTube

REPORTING TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

While local law enforcement are often unfamiliar with online social media,
officials recommend that targets report directly threatening online harassment
to law enforcement immediately so there is a timely documented record of the
abuse.

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PEOPLE-FOCUSED STRATEGIES

PLAN FOR SUPPORT & BACK-UP

If you think you might be attacked or harassed online, you don’t have to wait
until it happens to ask for help. Sometimes, the people in our lives mean well
but don’t understand how to support us. Maybe they don’t “get” online harassment
and minimize the effect it has on you or they want to help but have no idea how.

For example, people might hop onto your Twitter timeline and “take on” your
harassers, thinking they’re doing you a favour when they might just be drawing
more harassers to your feed. The intent was good, but the impact? Not so much.

Friends & Family

If you feel up to it, try to have an “Online Harassment 101” conversation with
the people in your life if you are or suspect you might be, harassed. There are
some great resources at the end of this document that might be helpful to send
their way.

When talking with loved ones think about what you might want help with, and ask
your friends and family in advance if they would perform certain tasks for you
if/when the abuse starts. Throughout this document we have listed ASK A FRIEND
for items that trusted people could help with.

TIP: Talk with your friends and family about not accidentally giving out
information about you via comments, social media posts with geolocations, photos
that you don’t want online etc.

You might ask one person to provide emotional support, check in on you, be
someone to vent to, etc. Another person might monitor your Facebook and Twitter
feeds, while another could monitor your email inbox, and a third could monitor
the comments on gross websites that might be writing about you, so you don’t
have to.

The advantage to setting this up in advance is twofold: first, you can respond
faster if/when the attacks come, because your network has already agreed to step
up. Second, you can decide in advance how you want people to handle things. Do
you want your Twitter monitor to block and report anyone who harasses you, or do
you just want them to monitor your feed to see if there are any threats you need
to know about? Should the person reading your emails put them all in a folder in
case you want to refer to them later when the crisis has passed, or should they
just delete them? Also be sure to give your team whatever passwords and access
they’ll need to do their assigned jobs in advance.

Employers

Depending on your employment situation, you may also want to alert bosses,
colleagues or co-workers that they may be hearing some gross and shady things
about you and why. Harassers sometimes try to target the employment status of
their victims, so the more you can get your workplace on your side before they
start hearing confusing messages about you, the lower the harasser’s credibility
will be and the better situation you’ll be in. But obviously use your judgement:
not every workplace will be equally understanding.

TIP: Check out Crash Override’s one page guide for Employers

SELF-CARE

Being targeted online can make things feel completely out of control. But two
things you can control – really important things anyone who has experienced it
will tell you – are how you treat yourself and how you respond to the harasser.

You will hear a lot of advice about whether or not to engage with your
harassers. There’s no right answer – it depends entirely on what’s most
important to you. If your No. 1 priority is to stay as safe as possible, both
physically and emotionally, it’s often best not to engage. But if you find that
you’re willing to risk more harassment in order to directly address your
harassers and call them out, that’s also a valid choice. You may also find that
the most important thing to you is to expose the harassment you’re being
subjected to and/or the people who are perpetrating it, in which case retweeting
it, emailing it to reporters, bloggers or activists, or otherwise
signal-boosting the attacks against you can be the way to go.

Regardless of what you choose to do about your harassers, also consider what
comforts you most when you’re upset, angry or triggered, and do the best you can
to plan for it. Will you want to be alone or see friends? Will you want your
favorite bubble bath on hand, or your favorite flavor of ice cream? Will it feel
good to exercise, or to build something with your hands, or to punch or kick
things? Can you save a rainy-day fund so you can get some bodywork? Can a friend
be on-call to come do childcare for an hour or two so you can just take a deep
breath?

It’s so important to take care of yourself, even if that just means going to bed
and pulling the covers over your head and crying. You’re going to have feelings.
It’s ok to honor them rather than deny them. Whatever you can do to give
yourself space to have them and take care of them will make you more resilient
in the long run.

Mental Health

Online harassment, harassment and abuse of any kind, is a traumatic experience.
Seeking mental health services like therapy or counseling can help offer extra
emotional support and resources during and after traumatic experiences.

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RESOURCES

The following are a list of sites that offer support to people being targeted by
online harassment and more online safety guides.

 * Crash Override
   * A website and network that works preventatively and reactively, warning
     targets and working with them during episodes of harassment to keep them
     safe and provide them with the means to reduce harm and rebuild, as well as
     disempower their harassers. They also have a resource center with even more
     tips and suggestions.
 * DIY Guide to Feminist Cybersecurity
   * A robust online safety guide created by Safe Hub Collective, a Boston based
     group of activists working to make public spaces, physical or digital,
     safer and more accessible for everyone.
 * The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy by Violet Blue
   * A practical, step by step detailed guide to online privacy.
 * 9 Ways to Dodge Trolls: A Feminist’s Guide to Digital Security
   * Trolls on the attack? Check out these 9 ways you can avoid (some of) them.
 * Zen: The Art of Making Tech Work For You
   * A community-built resource for women and trans* activists, human rights
     defenders and technologists.
 * Without My Consent
   * Without My Consent is a non-profit organization seeking to combat online
     invasions of privacy. Their resources are intended to empower individuals
     to stand up for their privacy rights and inspire meaningful debate about
     the internet, accountability, free speech, and the serious problem of
     online invasions of privacy.
 * The Weather Report
   * A platform dedicated to supporting the emotional health and wellness of
     small, intimate networks.

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UNDERSTANDING ONLINE HARASSMENT

There are a number of excellent resources to learn more about online harassment.

BOOKS

 * Hate Crimes in Cyber Space by Danielle Citron
 * “This is why we can’t have nice things: Mapping the relationship between
   online trolling and mainstream culture” by Whitney Phillips

VIDEOS

 * Steph Guthrie TEDx talk “The problem with don’t feed the trolls”
 * Anita Sarkeesian TEDxWomen
 * Anita Sarkeesian at XOXO Conference
 * Monica Lewinsky TED Talk “The Price of Shame”

ARTICLES

 * “You Asked: How do I deal with online harassment? How do I help the targets
   of online harassment?” by Ashe Dryden
 * “Dos and Don’ts of online sexism” by Leigh Alexander
 * “Game Changer” by Katherine Cross
 * “Guide to Internetting While Female” by Anita Sarkeesian

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ABOUT US

We created this document because we wanted to share what we have learned through
years of being targeted by cyber mobs. We know how intimidating, scary, and
overwhelming online harassment can be and we hope this document can help to
empower readers to make informed safety and security decisions that are right
for them.

We’d like to extend a big thank you to the security experts and colleagues who
consulted on this document.

This document was created by:

Jaclyn Friedman is a writer, speaker and feminist troublemaker. She is the
award-winning creator of two books, Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual
Power and a World Without Rape, and What You Really Really Want: The Smart
Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. She is also the founder and former
executive director of Women, Action & the Media (WAM!), where she led the
successful #FBrape campaign to apply Facebook’s hate-speech ban to content that
promotes gender-based violence, and was the architect of WAM!’s Twitter
Harassment Reporting Demonstration Project.

Anita Sarkeesian is a media critic and the creator of Feminist Frequency, a
video webseries that explores the representations of women in pop culture
narratives. Her work focuses on deconstructing the stereotypes, patterns and
tropes associated with women in popular culture as well as highlighting issues
surrounding the targeted harassment of women in online and gaming spaces.

Renee Bracey Sherman is a reproductive justice activist and the author of Saying
Abortion Aloud: Research and Recommendations for Public Abortion Storytellers
and Organizations. Since having an abortion at 19, her work has focused on
increasing the visibility of people who have had abortions and ending the stigma
and shame they face. Bracey Sherman is also a writer with Echoing Ida, a Black
women’s writing collective and a board member at NARAL Pro-Choice America.

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PRESS

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Interviews with the Creators

 * “Activists make tool to fight online harassment” – Marketplace Tech [Radio]
   * “It was really important to us that this guide be intersectional and
     acknowledge the varying complex levels of sexist, racist, homophobic
     attacks we were facing and continue to face.”

 * “A guide to protecting yourself online” – The Daily Dot
   * “We come from very different realms, but the tactics used to silence us are
     very much all the same”

 * “New guide for feminists shows how to handle haters and trolls” – Mashable
   * “Support is key to surviving attacks.”

 * “We Shouldn’t Need a Guide on Staying Safer Online” – RH Reality Check
   * “This guide and other guides like it are here to help folks who are being
     attacked because everyone else is failing them,”

 * “These Activists Created A Guide To Fighting Online Harassment” – The FBomb
   * “Our goal for the guide is to help the people most likely to be targeted –
     women, people of color, queer and trans people and other oppressed and
     marginalized people – not feel like speaking up online is too big of a
     risk.”

 * “The Third Wave Interview with Jaclyn Friedman” – CHUO 89.1FM [Radio]

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