PROTECTING AGAINST ONLINE ABUSE AND HARASSMENT, OFTEN BY THIRD PARTIES: RESOURCES AND INFORMATION FOR THE HARVARD COMMUNITY OVERVIEW In recent years, there has been an increase in incidents of online harassment from outsiders targeted at the academic community. Students, faculty, staff, postdocs, and other academic appointees who publish articles, provide expert commentary, or are active on social media can become targets for online harassment. Online harassment can take different forms: •
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“Trolling” occurs when individuals deliberately follow and provoke others online, often with offensive content. While most trolling is merely a nuisance, occasionally trolling attacks can escalate to threats or to the point where numerous individuals are engaged in harassing the target and/or target’s organization. “Doxing” (sometimes “doxxing”) is when private identifying information that is not otherwise publicly available is published online. This information can include sharing an individual’s private email, personal phone number, home address, etc. on various platforms to frighten the individual and encourage additional harassment. “Cyberbullying” is the willful and repeated harm inflicted through using computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.
These situations can be very intense, alarming, and disruptive to an individual. Online targeting can also have real consequences for livelihoods and careers. Harvard provides this document as a resource for community members who have been identified and targeted for online abuse, harassment, and intimidation. Please note the following guidance contains resources and information on reporting incidents of cyber-bullying, doxing, or trolling. It is not the process for reporting conduct that violates or may violate the University’s harassment/discrimination/bullying policy. You can find information about that policy here. WHAT RECOURSE DO I HAVE AGAINST ONLINE ABUSE AND HARASSMENT? Steps you can take to combat online abuse and harassment include (1) requesting takedowns of false statements that may have been made in error, (2) requesting that platforms and web domain registrars remove abusive content, (3) documenting the abuse (i.e., preserving evidence), (4) reporting threats and other criminal misconduct to law enforcement, and (5) obtaining legal advice regarding consequences to you and possible civil actions against abusers. Legal action may be of limited utility in these matters. We discuss this in more detail in the sections below.