I've always wondered where the dividing line really lies between doxxing and just compiling publicly available info into an easy to digest format.

Clearly, tying someone's pseudonymous online identity (like my lemmy account) to a real life identity crosses that line (except when those identities are explicitly linked by the account owner).

But like, what about a lemmy account that regularly posts links to github projects all by one github account, posted to lemmy a few hours after they go up on github, where the github has a link to the github owner's linkedin? The lemmy account is not explicitly linked to the identity in linkedin, but it only shortcuts perhaps 3 minutes of data gathering, and all the individual pieces are public.

What about if you have someone's full name and rough area of residence, as if you met someone at an event in your area? You can probably find their Facebook, from that a handful of info, chain that together with stuff like public yearbooks, linkedin, online white/yellpw pages, etc. Without digging into private information, just using public sources, you can get a shocking amount of info on most people.

All that rambling aside, live imagery of a person's face being matched to public pictures attached to online profiles is clearly a leap in the wrong direction, but the bigger issue is just how much public info is floating around about people.

While it's a privacy nightmare either way, on some level I prefer things like this being in the hands of the public instead of only available to corporations. I have this naieve hope that someday it might make people examine the overwhelming amount of data being collected all the time.