Lives have gotten simpler and more productive owing to technological advancement.
However, this advancement has also occasioned undesirable side effects for users.
Among them is a surge in doxing to women and vulnerable groups.
Women organizations, Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi) and Equality Now describe doxing as the sharing of private, personally identifiable information on the internet, with malicious intent and without the victim’s consent.
This form of online harassment can include the release of private information to undermine someone’s credibility or reputation and to shame and humiliate them.
Women's rights groups have blamed the rise in doxing for the lack of national and international laws.
AUDRi Global Coordinator Emma Gibson highlighted how the failure to address doxing has a knock-on effect on gender and representation in the digital space.
"With little or no legal recourse, those targeted, or who, with good reason, fear being targeted by doxing and other forms of online abuse, have very little option but to moderate their behaviour to avoid potential threats,” she said.
“Because these harms disproportionately affect women, their voices and contributions are being marginalized even further. The consequence of risk avoidance is an even more divided digital space.”
Gibson said that doxing poisons the entire digital ecosystem calling on the technology industry leaders to take measures necessary to correct it.
According to research done by the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights in February 2024, there is no International human rights law that directly regulates and tackles doxing.
The research explores international human rights law and gives a snapshot of legal frameworks in different jurisdictions around the world including the European Union, Australia, England and Wales, Kenya, New Zealand, Nigeria, Scotland, South Africa, California, Texas and Virginia in the United States.
According to the research, Kenya has no specific law defining doxing. However, it does have laws that prohibit doxing.
Article 31 of the Kenyan constitution provides for the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have information relating to one’s family or private affairs unnecessarily required or revealed.
Article 33(1) guarantees every person the right to freedom of expression.
However, in exercising the right to freedom of expression, one must respect the rights and reputation of others.
Equality Now’s Digital Law and Rights Advisor Amanda Manyame said there is a need for comprehensive legal reforms addressing the risks and violations women and other vulnerable individuals experience online.
"Governments urgently need to introduce and implement laws that effectively deal with the rapidly evolving digital world. But doxing has been happening since the internet’s early days, and there is no excuse for the failure by policymakers to introduce legislation and tackle the underlying causes of this and other online abuses," she said.
Manyame added that governments must fulfil their duty to protect from digital abuse.
"We urge governments to review their existing legal frameworks and assess whether they provide adequate protection to victims of doxing. This requires taking into account the specific issues and risks experienced by women and girls."