Doxing is when an attacker uses online and publicly available resources such as search engines and social networking sites to gather private details about a specific person or organization. The attacker can then use such information against the target.

During a doxing attack, the attacker can gather personal information about someone by searching for the information that was posted by the target. Often, on social networking websites, people post a lot of personal information about themselves, their families, and work stuff. When asked whether they have any concerns about someone stealing their information, the most common response is "I have nothing to hide" or "I will lose nothing by posting a photo or a comment."

What a lot of people don't realize is that a malicious person can take a screenshot of their post and then doctor it for malicious purposes.

In the following section, we will learn how to plan for a social engineering attack.