{"id":30992,"date":"2026-10-20T16:23:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T15:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=30992"},"modified":"2026-10-20T16:23:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T15:23:42","slug":"ai-tools-doxing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/ai-tools-doxing\/30992\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI tools are used for doxing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anonymous imageboards have long been places where users could chat under pseudonyms without revealing their real names. But now people on these forums are discussing and testing AI tools for doxing\u00a0\u2014 that is, for finding, matching, and publishing users\u2019 data without their consent. Often this goes hand in hand with stalking the victim, hacking their accounts, bullying, and blackmail, and ultimately leads to a damaged reputation or even worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this post, we explain how artificial intelligence helps malicious actors leak other people\u2019s data\u00a0\u2014 and how to stand up for your right to online privacy.<\/p>\n

How bad actors uncover information about users<\/h2>\n

Analysts at Open Measures have reported<\/a> that, since October 2025, users of Soyjak.party<\/a>, an imageboard popular<\/a> with young people on the far right, have been discussing and using AI to deanonymize other users. Their victims are often activists, bloggers, and members of other \u201chostile\u201d forums.<\/p>\n

The tools the experts found run right in the browser, and automate almost the entire process of collecting information about a victim. They can search open sources and leak databases, and they use any new leads\u00a0\u2014 for example, an email address linked to a username\u00a0\u2014 to dig even deeper. They also extract metadata from photos and videos, estimate a person\u2019s approximate location from IP addresses they find, and finally put everything together into one huge digital dossier. These Soyjak.party tools are no longer functional, but similar ones have been spreading<\/a> across other imageboards.<\/p>\n

In February 2026, researchers demonstrated<\/a> that sometimes ordinary forum chatter is enough to reveal who you are. They put together summaries of posts by 338 Hacker News users, removed names, usernames, and social media links, and then asked AI to work out who was behind them. The AI compared details about jobs, interests, and personal background with information available online\u00a0\u2014 and correctly identified 226 of the people, or about two-thirds of the sample. The price of deanonymization turned out to be laughably low \u2014 at between US$1 and US$4 per user.<\/p>\n

To be fair, people knew how to build digital dossiers even before the generative AI boom. For starters, there are OSINT tools that search for data in open sources. Journalists and investigators were the first to use them, but, as you might guess, malicious actors soon mastered these tools too. Unlike AI models and agents, traditional OSINT services follow set scripts and can\u2019t \u201cthink\u201d or make decisions on the fly.<\/p>\n

An agent out for revenge: the OpenClaw case<\/h2>\n

If you think doxing always needs a person with ill intent, we\u2019ve bad news: sometimes the one settling scores can be\u2026 artificial intelligence itself.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a story that started out innocuously enough. An AI agent running on the much-hyped OpenClaw platform<\/a> suggested an improvement for Matplotlib, a popular tool for building graphs and charts. But the project\u2019s rules said that code submitted by AI agents wasn\u2019t accepted. One of the project\u2019s volunteers, Scott Shambaugh, simply turned down the AI\u2019s suggestion.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d think that would be the end of it. Think again! The AI agent decided the rejection deserved some publicity, so it published<\/a> an \u201cexpos\u00e9\u201d about the developer on its blog (yes, you read that right: the agent had its own blog<\/em>). It gathered information about Shambaugh from open sources, studied his public activity, and accused him of being biased against AI. It even started speculating about the developer\u2019s psychological motives, and suggested he was afraid of competition from artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Once this \u201cprivate\u201d conversation between Shambaugh and the AI agent went public, other users rallied behind the developer\u00a0\u2014 and the agent had to publish an \u201capology\u201d post.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pretty absurd story, but it teaches a good lesson: always read the privacy policy of any AI service<\/a> carefully, and steer clear of new models from unknown sources.<\/p>\n

How to avoid becoming a doxing victim: a guide<\/h2>\n

If AI speeds up searches and connects the dots between details that used to be scattered across dozens of websites, the next logical question is: what can you do to shrink your digital footprint<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Disappearing from the internet completely is almost impossible. So protecting your data isn\u2019t so much about leaving as few traces as possible, but cutting the number of links that can be used to piece together your identity. If you\u2019re an advanced user, we recommend reading our post, How to disappear from the internet<\/strong><\/a>, in addition to the tips below.<\/p>\n

Manage your digital footprint<\/h3>\n