THE DOXING DILEMMA: SEEKING A REMEDY FOR THE MALICIOUS PUBLICATION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

In recent years, malevolent actors have seized upon a new tool to harass, silence, threaten, and injure people online: doxing-the malicious publication of personal identifying information like a home address. Although doxing is an online tool, it causes concrete and serious harm to victims by moving harassment from the Internet to the physical world. Congress and state legislatures have begun to address different forms of cyberharassment. However, no effective and consistent legal remedy for doxing currently exists. This Note examines and critiques current federal and state schemes, and it ultimately proposes that lower federal courts should adopt a new intent standard to make the federal Interstate Communications Statute more applicable to doxing and that states can and should criminalize malicious doxing.