Oxford Student newspaper doxes Twitter account by possible criminal unauthorised use of a comptuer system

[QuietContraryMary]

Heads up.

www.oxfordstudent.com/2018/10/26/transphobic-tweets-linked-to-oxford-sociology-professor/

"The Twitter account, named Henry Wimbush and still online at the time of publication, has been tweeting statements such as “transphobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons” since first Tweeting in January.

"it was found that the account in question could be linked to a partial phone number and Yahoo! email using freely available data and by making use of Twitter’s various functions. The Yahoo! email itself is also linked to a phone number ending in the same numbers as those previously identified, while also revealing that it is connected to the" [partially redacted email]

How this hack works:

go to twitter.com/login

click 'forgotten your password'

type in your username, or a third party's username

you will get a message something like this:

We found the following information associated with your account.
Text a code to my phone ending in 12.
Email a link to ab*********@a.**

Note that:

• the last digits of the phone number can be used to tie your account to any phone number, since there are obviously 100 different combinations, so if it matches a phone number known by the doxer, it essentially identifies you
• I'm not clear exactly how much information is given on email addresses in every case, but at a minimum you get the first two letters of the username (before the @), the first two letters of the domain name (the bit after the @), and the exact length of both parts of the address.

So for example, if you signed up, anonymously, to Twitter using the email address justine*@mumsnet.com, then it would show to any attacker ju******@mu.** if they tried to recover it in order to dox the owner.

The use of this feature in order to dox people most likely constitutes an offence under the Computer Misuse Act s1 as the use of this feature to dox people is clearly not authorised by Twitter, and I would encourage those affected to report the people involved to the police.

Hence I am not repeating the criminally obtained dox of the person, and I would encourage people NOT the repeat the name in this thread.

Note that this doxing follows quite soon from Aimee Challenor boasting of outing Miranda Yardley's Twitter account using the same means.

Whether there are more serious offences committed is hard to say, as the doxing itself is obviously a preparatory act to having people fired, harassed, threatened, family & children harassed, and so on, but the doing so is not necessarily planned by the original doxer so it would be hard to prove a more serious offence.

I would advise those who are on Twitter and are not using their real name to create a gmail/yahoo/other anonymous webmail account, matching the twitter username (so if you are @ARealRadFem on Twitter, make a yahoo mail account [email protected]). In terms of the phone verification that's a little trickier as the 1/100 last two digits is VERY outing if they have a suspicion who you are, but otherwise completely useless. I have had some luck in the past with adding an extra digit (so if you are 07812 456789, you can add an extra digit on like this 07812 4567890, and verification phone calls still work), but YMMV on that.

Critical thinking punished at Oxford. What a sorry state of affairs.
They obviously don't teach history there.
Disgusted with this.

I cannot see for the life of me what he's said that is in any way 'transphobic".

He's merely said/written some facts that the TRAs don't like.

"Can't help but laugh at the idea that the ones getting thrown out of Oxford are the students lmfao"

If they have misused online facilities (by hacking, for example), then they risk expulsion or, at the very least, may be banned from using the computer services, which tends to screw up their degree in any case.

I would hope no Oxford University student would be so stupid as to risk their degree in this way, though.

Vicky

He's merely said/written some facts
Facts = big red button of 'transphobia'.

Facts are not good.

Facts are bad.

Feelings are good.
Hurting feelings through stating facts is bad.

Get with the new world order Vicky !

I've just read the article - at the end there's a correction..........
A previous version of this article described polyamory and asexuality as mutually exclusive. We acknowledge that this is not the case and have amended the article accordingly
I can now confidently assert my identity - I am a polyamorous asexual. Any acephobes on here have been warned.

Is "polyamorous asexual" a posh way of saying "I know loads of folk I wouldn't touch with someone else's"?

I recently learnt that I was at the same college as shon Faye (if the info from google is accurate) and there are only a few years between us! completely irrelevant trivia

Are you sure this is a safe space for you, Imnobody? Mumsnet is a known hotbed of polyphobia.

Imnobody

That update makes me think of this image.

The trans/poly/QIA movement is currently eating its own tail!

the article is hilarious. it begins

Please note that this article contains explicit discussion of transphobic statements and images

then later quotes this gross piece of transphobia which was tweeted by henrywimbush:

transactivists are used to safe spaces where their ideology is affirmed and never challenged

I mean, kind of proving wimbush's point there people.

apparently the tweet was accompanied by a snowflake emoticon (presumably this is the transphobic image referred to in the warning?). I'm a bit worried about our bright academic future given that OS felt the need to add

“snowflake” here used as “a disparaging term for a person who is seen as overly sensitive and fragile

aww. diddums.

Reading this makes me realise that all women have to do is expose these views. Every time the general public is exposed to the bullying authoritarian TRA approach, they recoil. We're a sophisticated democratic society and the believe what I say or you're a transphobe just doesn't cut it.
When you add to that the flashers, sex offenders, extreme porn advocates etc currently trying to undermine the safeguarding of children and women, most people, especially parents draw a line.

Sometimes it seems we just have to watch and wait.......

The people who wrote this really are disingenuous bastards.

They said

"While this could refer to Oxford Brookes, the account references an update to their employer’s trans policies in a Tweet in February 2018. Oxford University last updated its transgender guidelines in March 2018, while Brookes’ was in May 2017, "

The actual Tweet
twitter.com/MrHenryWimbush/status/958895447430574080

"My employer's rules now say that not respecting someone's gender is a disciplinary offence. This has not yet become an issue for me as I've only encountered handmaidens (who turned me into a TERF!) but I would be concerned when the new generation (higher % trans) hit."

This person was hacked purely and simply by hacking. Everything else is a smokescreen, and they've desperately tried to clutch at straws to gloss over the fact that they illegally used the 'recover password' function to dox this man.

And now they're saying it's not illegal, because, um, reasons.

Bog-standard TRA gaslighting bollocks.

You note that they DON'T link to that Tweet, nor do they quote it, because this is not journalism it's just a hatchet job, and by alluding to this quite, they can pretend that they did some great Miss Marple effort, rather than, in reality, illegally accessing a computer system.

I do hope these boys aren't planning to get a job in a real newspaper in the future, because this is desperate, desperate stuff.

This is someone who was in fact very careful not to say what their job was, what kind of field it was in, nor the nature or identity of their employer, but they are pretending that it was all spelt out there.

There was no 'I work as a lecturer', 'I am a professor', 'I work in a university', 'I live in Oxford'

ONLY illegally accessing a computer system for the purposes of outing.

Absolute fuckers.

Fascinating. The moral highground seems to be in the same place as the fracking drills in Lancashire.

It is true you can tell someone’s sex by how they write on anonymous Internet forums imho. The sheer joy some men get from threatening people’s livelihoods because they don’t agree with them. You can see how totalitarianism gets the foot soldiers, they’re practically begging to be let loose on the rest of us.

Dear lord.

Orange:

I am not actually making a judgement on its justification or not.

Also Orange (a split second later. In the same post in fact).

he should be exposed to journalistic criticism by the student paper for his didgusting conduct on twitter.

Also Orange

Wrong, arguing against their inclusion is transphobia. And thats not even the relevant part. He misgendered her, which is against University guidelines and is transphobia.

Which is wrong. There are explicit exemptions under the equality act to exclude men identifying as women from women's sport. Unless Orange thinks the equality act is transphobic. (Wouldn't surprise me).

Lmfao and lol - also Orange. Channelling his inner stroppy teen.

Not having been to Oxford I was always under the impression that its students were intelligent, open-minded critical thinkers.

Then along comes Orange.....

There are some right wankers there!

I wonder if the orange isn't a reference to the radical libdem youth group?

Oh, I thought it might an homage to the Red Guard. I was imagining Orange and mates marching around campus denouncing and purging wrongthink left, right and centre.

Orange - come back! Tell us the inspiration behind your user name! We're all agog.

just on the subject of the illegality or otherwise of this doxxing effort

the person who did it would have had to type henrywimbush's ID into the forgotten password page

so this is not information they accidentally stumbled upon, they had to actively seek it out

on that basis i'm more inclined to side with those who think this act may have been illegal

I'm kind of imagining it like Mao meets Porterhouse Blue.

the person who did it would have had to type henrywimbush's ID into the forgotten password page

so this is not information they accidentally stumbled upon, they had to actively seek it out

Especially as, IMO, they have attempted to do this to MANY people, this is not a one-off. There was nothing about his account that would say 'this person is someone we can publicly shame'.

Perhaps it's Orange as in the Order. 'Terfs are the antichrist' and all that.

Important speech by RAQUEL ROSARIO SÁNCHEZ

'FULL TRANSCRIPT: WOMEN’S RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH IN UK UNIVERSITIES'
(extract)
"Thank you especially to the Bristol Free Speech Society for extending the invitation and for taking this issue on.

I particularly want to thank our venue, for hosting us tonight… Thank you very much to every single person at the University of Bristol who has done nothing more than respect the rule of law, and in doing so, have stood up for all our rights: my right as a speaker to speak and your right as an audience to listen and challenge my arguments.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to every single person at the University of Bristol who, by following the law and their very own policies, have allowed me to stand here so that I can deliver a speech about women’s right to free speech. You’re all brave and stunning!

We all know why we are here. We know why you all want to hear from me. And I want to be clear that we are not going to talk about that. That will remain the elephant in the room so please do not ask me about it during the questions and answer portion of this event.

As you can imagine, I’ve had months and months to ruminate about the topic we will discuss tonight: women’s right to free speech in UK Universities. I have thought long and hard about what does it mean to encourage a climate where women have to right to be heard? What does it mean to foment a climate in which women’s voices are suppressed?

My most pressing thought is: what a bizarre situation! How many female speakers have been no-platformed? How many female academics have had their articles or their research pulled? How many female professors and staff members have been subjected to unsubstantiated disciplinary procedures for holding “wrong” ideas? How many are frightened by that prospect and self-censor, as we speak?

A year ago, I was in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. I was working for the Ministry of Women in the Shelter Work department. My contract expired on the 30th of October so around this time, I was bidding farewells to my friends, family and a couple of rascal dogs. And I was going to the beach at weird hours because I wanted to get as much sunshine as possible before I came to England.

I knew what you all have going on here, whether-wise… I also knew what had been happening in UK universities to feminist writers and campaigners, for far too long. That is why the first thing I did, as soon as I got my acceptance letter , was read several of the university policies. Particularly, the Unacceptable Behaviour Policy. And boy that one came in handy!

But I wanted to make sure that, in everything I did, I abide by the rule of law of my temporary new home and the institution that I was joining. I wanted to make sure that I did “everything right” … but as we know, sometimes academic institutions do not do “everything right” by feminist speakers. I feel grateful that, now, I have the right to speak, but I’m constantly reminding myself of how many others have had that right shut down. My hope is that by standing up for myself and for women’s right to free speech, other women will have their right to free speech and freedom of assembly respected and upheld, as well.

Australian feminist writer Dale Spender wrote in ‘Women of Ideas (And What Men Have Done To Them)’:

“From Aphra Behn to Matina Horner women have argued that men have claimed for themselves a monopoly of the mind, they have described and legitimized themselves as the ‘authoritive sex’, the sex with the capacity to be ‘objective’, the sex who comprises the ‘natural’ intellectuals, philosophers, poets, politicians, policy-makers, etc. It seems that in the long struggle for equality women have achieved few, if any gains in this area.”

This was published in 1983.

Spender writes that women’s intellectual capacities was perceived as a threat back when the playwriter Aphra Behn was writing in the 1600’s, and in the 80’s as well. I would argue that in 2018, women speaking up is still perceived as a threat. This somber and depressing reality is precisely the reason why we’re all here tonight" (continues)
8rosariosanchez.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/discurso-derecho-de-las-mujeres-a-la-libertad-de-expresion/

you might read and consider this Orange