Why is non-consensual release of personal information allowed?

[Jhanzo]

I can't find a post where theymos posted all of his information, but theymos did confirm bits and pieces here and there. and he published a few information himself.

so saltyspitoon is telling the truth

As I said, there are a few threads in meta discussing Theymos' dox as well as where to find it and links, etc. Its not a secret, he has posted a lot of the info himself.

though I won't post all of that here because it would serve no purpose.

EDIT
some of them are outside of meta.

[yolalanda]

I can't find a post where theymos posted all of his information, but theymos did confirm bits and pieces here and there. and he published a few information himself.

so saltyspitoon is telling the truth

Whelp, that's that then, we can finally close the thread.
Thanks for vouching for salty & offering 0 evidence, random Anon from the interweb.

[tf_banned_acc]

I think the point is that if true we have a double standard is all.

That's mainly my point, but there's no need for "if true". It is true, and you can easily prove it yourself -- right now.

Try posting a specific 10 digit Google Voice number, or a specific street address. You will see https://i.imgur.com/EZifOg6.png with an automatic permanent ban.

[Xian01]

I can't find a post where theymos posted all of his information, but theymos did confirm bits and pieces here and there. and he published a few information himself.
so saltyspitoon is telling the truth

As I said, there are a few threads in meta discussing Theymos' dox as well as where to find it and links, etc. Its not a secret, he has posted a lot of the info himself.

though I won't post all of that here because it would serve no purpose.
EDIT
some of them are outside of meta.

Thinking outside the box here, perhaps a good start is for someone that has found the information on these forums, to make a post in this thread - aggregating all known other links - so it's easy to locate, and we can stop having this silliness with Thermos banning accounts posting his information, that is already, apparently, easy to find here.

It would effectively end the issue once and for all if certain digits and strings are verboten on these forums.

[Blazed]

I think the point is that if true we have a double standard is all.

That's mainly my point, but there's no need for "if true". It is true, and you can easily prove it yourself -- right now.

Try posting a specific 10 digit Google Voice number, or a specific street address. You will see https://i.imgur.com/EZifOg6.png with an automatic permanent ban.

So if I were to post either of those I would be insta banned from these boards?

[Jhanzo]

So if I were to post either of those I would be insta banned from these boards?

I think TF(?) are just trolling. see the image he posted.

@Xian01
I hope you are not expecting me to do that because I won't. I will be contradicting myself if I do that.

[Athertle]

I think the point is that if true we have a double standard is all.

That's mainly my point, but there's no need for "if true". It is true, and you can easily prove it yourself -- right now.

Try posting a specific 10 digit Google Voice number, or a specific street address. You will see https://i.imgur.com/EZifOg6.png with an automatic permanent ban.

So if I were to post either of those I would be insta banned from these boards?

Probably not. Look how the username in the picture is "Bitcoin Forum"; that makes it almost certain that TF edited the page before screenshotting it/edited the screenshot, so that also means that he probably just edited the text box.

[dogie]

I think the point is that if true we have a double standard is all.

That's mainly my point, but there's no need for "if true". It is true, and you can easily prove it yourself -- right now.

Try posting a specific 10 digit Google Voice number, or a specific street address. You will see https://i.imgur.com/EZifOg6.png with an automatic permanent ban.

So if I were to post either of those I would be insta banned from these boards?

Probably not. Look how the username in the picture is "Bitcoin Forum"; that makes it almost certain that TF edited the page before screenshotting it/edited the screenshot, so that also means that he probably just edited the text box.

There is actually an account that is called Bitcoin Forum, but its not been used since 2011. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=34167

[theymos]

If you're going around posting people's personal information for no real reason other than just to annoy them, then that's trolling, which is not allowed.

Dox is currently more-or-less allowed for two reasons:
- It is sometimes useful when dealing with scammers for the community to collaboratively investigate the scammer. There have been a few cases where these collaborative investigations have led to good results.
- It is very difficult to define a consistent line between reasonable public information and non-public dox. For example, on Reddit the admins will sometimes delete posts which reference someone's real name even when this name can be found on the first page of a Google search for their pseudonym, which is ridiculous.

This is something that I've been thinking about for a long time. The current rules are sub-optimal, I think, since it's too easy for innocent people to be hurt. But at the same time I don't want to ban "personal information" entirely, due to the above two reasons. Maybe dox should be restricted to an "investigations" board which is only viewable to Jr members and above, or something like that.

[Pips]

Maybe dox should be restricted to an "investigations" board which is only viewable to Jr members and above, or something like that.

I would support that entirely. Also, it would eliminate all of those newbie accounts that are created for the sole intention of writing one post.

There is actually an account that is called Bitcoin Forum, but its not been used since 2011. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=34167

Yeah, I saw that account and that's why I said it was probably fake.

[Vod]

Maybe dox should be restricted to an "investigations" board which is only viewable to Jr members and above, or something like that.

People would just copy and paste info into boards viewable by everyone.   

[Pips]

Maybe dox should be restricted to an "investigations" board which is only viewable to Jr members and above, or something like that.

People would just copy and paste info into boards viewable by everyone.   

If accounts did that, then it would be a pretty simple matter for mods to delete them, right? If they were pretty obviously posting the info so that the whole forum could see it.

[dogie]

Maybe dox should be restricted to an "investigations" board which is only viewable to Jr members and above, or something like that.

People would just copy and paste info into boards viewable by everyone.  

If accounts did that, then it would be a pretty simple matter for mods to delete them, right? If they were pretty obviously posting the info so that the whole forum could see it.

Yeah. Its actually a very good idea as long as "investigations" isn't indexable by search engines. Can put it as a subforum in scam investigations and any doxes outside of there are easily admin'able.

[Xian01]

If you're going around posting people's personal information for no real reason other than just to annoy them, then that's trolling, which is not allowed.

So I take it you're going to retroactively remove all of Josh Zerlans posts pertaining to my dox then ?

[SaltySpitoon]

If you're going around posting people's personal information for no real reason other than just to annoy them, then that's trolling, which is not allowed.
...

As is attempting to post your dox, in a thread about doxxing, to prove that a forum moderator is [ether grossly misinformed or simply] lying


~~The Streisand Experience

Pretty sure I was right. Are people posting Theymos' dox to help in their accusation against him, or just to be annoying? Though I classified it as spam instead of trolling.

[tf_banned_acc]

{ self moved to a new thread }

@SaltySpitoon: I disagree. That's not what happened in my case. You gave relatively specific directions to where you believed theymos's dox could be found, because you seemed to believe that people have posted his dox w/o real consequence. I gave relatively specific directions to where theymos' dox could be found to correct your information, with the impression that what you posted was OK.

Neither of these circumstances involved trolling, or posting it for the purposes to annoy someone. This is looking like theymos is indiscriminately banning people, excessively I would say, in order to assert his power and prevent his dox from being disseminated -- not for moderation principles of trolling, spam, et al.

[Xian01]

Pretty sure I was right. Are people posting Theymos' dox to help in their accusation against him, or just to be annoying? Though I classified it as spam instead of trolling.

I would imagine people are attempting to post Thermos' dox because of the Streisand Effect that he has created, and to demonstrate him having his cake and eating it too.

[Xian01]

A formal declaration of Shenanigans is being made about Theymos' dox being available on these forums, unless that information is stored as an image that has not been OCRd, or in a non-publically accessible section of these forums (the Mr. Marquardt doxed on these forums with a .gov email is not the same individual in control of these forums - Theymos is much younger)

Doing a specific keyword search on these forums yields no results. Blurred out the keyword for obvious reasons.



Additionally, doing a Google search with "site:bitcointalk.org", these are the only two meaningful sources of information I can locate.

"My real name is in my PGP public key (Michael Marquardt), though I prefer not to use it in online communications."
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8954.msg129776#msg129776
https://bitcointalk.org/docs/ulbricht.pdf

[Quickseller]

I don't think this information should be prohibited from being posted, nor do I think that the access of such information should be restricted to certain user groups. As the disclosure (or threat of disclosure) of such personal information gives an incentive to (potential) scammers from attempting to steal from others.

There is really no such thing as  "main" account, therefore the prohibiting of the release of personal information from a "sockpuppet" account would be unenforceable. However I do think that an incorrect dox (that is the result of doing little/no due diligence to confirm it's accuracy and/or other gross negligence), or a dox of someone who there is not significant evidence against that they have stolen significant amounts of money (or have stolen any amounts of money from the person posting the dox) should be considered to be causing "serious trouble" and they and their alts should receive negative trust so others should be warned against trusting them with potentially sensitive information.

Regarding themos's dox: I do think that theymos does have the right to protect his privacy. I don't see any major issue with theymos using some kind of automation/scrypt to prevent his personal information from being posted as this is little different from him using the same criteria manually to delete posts (this is assuming that the automation/scrypt does not count towards any page counts for advertising purposes).

If you were to get scammed by the owner of a website/forum, then it would probably not be a good use of resources to post the personal information of such owner on that forum, and I do not see how bitcointalk is any different. Also, if you are going to trust the owner of the forum enough to conduct business on such forum, then to an extent, you are trusting them enough to not delete any accusation/claim of wrong doing that may popup. It is my understanding that there are a few accusations against theymos regarding, among other things his use of donated forum funds, however AFAICT these accusations lack any substantial merit. I have also seen, in this very thread instructions on how to find theymos's dox that are inaccurate (that lack any merit) that have been allowed to remain, however I have also seen instructions that might have lead to a more accurate dox be deleted.

I don't think it is a good policy to ban people simply for posting theymos's dox, or posting a link to where to find his dox. The reason for this is because it appears to be socially acceptable to post personal information and those that post it may not know any better (maybe a warning would be more appropriate for a 1st offense). Also, it would not be unreasonable for someone to stumble upon theymos's dox and someone may genuinely post it out of curiosity to see if it is accurate.

There appear to be allegations that some people are banned if they mention that people are banned for posting theymos's dox (however the credibility behind these allegations is unknown). I think if this is the current policy, then it should certainly be revisited and will only make the forum appear less trustworthy if revealed to be true and such policy is not reversed. There is a lot of inaccurate information posted by a number of people, some with good intentions and some with malicious intentions, so I do not see any reason for banning those that make this kind of statements, regardless of the truth behind such statements. 

[bad_char5]

Regarding themos's dox: I do think that theymos does have the right to protect his privacy. I don't see any major issue with theymos using some kind of automation/scrypt to prevent his personal information from being posted etc., etc.

Hey hey, welcome back! Like your new sig.
The issue is not theymos' banning people for attempting to post his dox, but rather theymos' duplicity, and lying by the staff.

Let's assume that theymos is being honest when claiming that users are not banned for posting his dox, but rather for how and why those dox are posted -- with intent to troll.

The corollary, of course, being "dox posted with sound justification will remain unmolested, as will the users posting those."  And, since "sound justification"" is wholly subjective, this leaves the banned user with no recourse & allows all the non-theymos dox posted on this website to stay up, because unimpeded flow of information and freedom of speech.  Sounds like a win.

But wait, dear reader, wait!  Could an auto-ban script [which triggers on a number of substrings contained in theymos' dox/phone#/BTC address] distinguish between trolling & justified doxxing?!

I reply, emphatically, NO!

I posit the script in question is an algorithmically-governed automaton, banning every instance of theymosdox with mathematically-assured indiscretion and certainty