ON MARCH 6TH Newsweek made waves by claiming to reveal the identity of the inventor of Bitcoin, the digital currency. According to the magazine the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto is in fact a 64-year-old man called Satoshi Nakamoto. The Mr Nakamoto in question, for his part, has denied he is Bitcoin's inventor. Indeed in a subsequent interview with a reporter from the Associated Press, he struggled to name Bitcoin correctly. But as impenetrable to most people as the inner workings of the cryptocurrency is a curious word used to describe how Bitcoin’s supposed inventor was uncovered: Mr Nakamoto was "doxxed".
The term "dox" (also spelt "doxx", and short for "[dropping] documents") first came into vogue as a verb around a decade ago, referring to malicious hackers' habit of collecting personal and private information, including home addresses and national identity numbers. The data are often released publicly against a person’s wishes. It is a practice frowned upon by users of Reddit, a popular online forum, and many others.
More recently journalists have co-opted the phrase. It is now used by some, in a non-pejorative sense, to mean deep investigative reporting. This has blurred the distinction between nefarious digital intrusion and noble journalism. Farhad Manjoo, a technology reporter for the New York Times, pithily summed up the change in the word’s meaning: "doxxing is the new name for reporting." In 2012 Adrian Chen, a writer with Gawker, an online news website, exposed the identity of Michael Brutsch, a Reddit moderator, using techniques associated with doxxing. Mr Chen’s revelation split observers into two camps: journalists who applauded Mr Chen's tenacity on one hand, and users of Reddit, who enjoy the sense of anonymity the internet can provide and feel it should remain sacrosanct on the other. Was it tenacious reporting or needless exposure—good doxxing or bad?
The article claiming to reveal the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto by Leah McGrath Goodman, a Newsweek journalist, has caused a similar rumpus. It has raised the general question of whether it would be appropriate for an investigative reporter to unmask Bitcoin's mysterious inventor, who has striven to remain anonymous. Some argue that revealing his identity would make it easier to persuade people to trust the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency; others worry that it might compromise his personal safety, given the huge sums involved. But if, as many in the Bitcoin community believe, Miss McGrath Goodman has got the wrong man, then this would be a true doxxing of the old definition, the callous and careless exposure of a private life for no purpose whatsoever.
