UNITED STATES—Students entering the University of Texas, Austin, this semester were threatened in a tweet to be careful of the groups they join. If they chose conservative groups on campus, they may be doxxed.
Doxing is when an individual’s personal information is placed on social media. It is more than identity theft because it leaves the victim vulnerable by exposing private information.
The tweet in question was sent out over the summer aimed at freshman and incoming students for the fall semester. The tweet warns students to be careful of what groups they join suggesting that if students join conservative groups like Candace Owens, Turning Point USA, there could be consequences.
The University of Texas at Austin employs a man, who they have listed as the Curator of Entomology in the Department of Integrative Biology and a self-proclaimed insect photographer in the Biodiversity Center.
Alex Wild is very active on Twitter. His tweets are predominantly about insects, but in-between insect photography are tweets with hate speech toward President Donald Trump and his policies.
Fox News did a series of interviews on campus at the start of classes to get students response to the threats. None of the students, self-admittedly, conservative or liberal liked the idea of doxing, nor did they seem visibly upset by the threats made on twitter.
Canyon News reached out to UT Texas-Austin for a statement regarding the threats. J.B. Bird, the Director of Media Relations & Issues Management told Canyon News:
“The group that threatened to dox our students in June is not a student organization. The anonymous group is not affiliated with our university in any way.”
Bird went on to say that members of this group or another group somehow related to this group doxed some of the staff members last fall.
