Claire Voltaire's Doxxing Account

The following is the full text of Claire Voltaire’s Medium article, published March 2, 2021 (with addendum August 9, 2021). Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes.

My Doxing

By Claire Voltaire

I never thought one day I would care if my name was public. I never imagined I would have almost 20K followers interested in reading my random thoughts or essays. I certainly never thought I would become a topic of conversation for QAnon.

How did I get here?

When you join Twitter, you quickly learn how little people care about you or what you say. I’ll never forget someone telling me: “why should I care about the opinion of an account with 10 followers.”

With followers comes scrutiny. Your edgy anecdotes no longer only entertain, they enrage others into obsessive fury.

I joined Twitter around 2016 during the elections when U.S. politics dominated. The split was between SJWs and the Anti crowds. I fell somewhere in the middle, receiving hate from both sides.

I didn’t initially emphasize my identity as a Jewish woman. My Jewish identity eventually attracted attention from the Alt Right. I never denied it when asked, and apparently even white supremacists knew before it became my account’s main focus.

As long as I was another person on the left discussing my beliefs, I felt I belonged. I made friends, received invitations to chats, and earned embracement for fighting Alt Right characters, especially when my snark managed to “pwn the Nazis.”

As my Jewishness became more known, I witnessed toxic topics like the Jewish Question dominate discussions. I discovered how my “friends” on the left actually felt about Israel, the issue ran deeper than ignorance. When I wrote “Antizionism is antisemitism,” that sealed my fate.

The Escalation

My Twitter interactions grew increasingly contentious. Death threats appeared as memes using my avatar on hanging bodies or people thrown from roofs. I couldn’t distinguish between “just memes” and genuine threats. I deleted my Facebook, which contained personal information about my family, coworkers, and friends.

A young man sent me a picture holding a gun alongside a YouTube video of a van crashing into a bus station with text reading: “This is what we do to you and yours.” These severe threats were eventually removed and users permanently banned, but harassment continued for about a year.

I’m the sole caretaker for my daughter after her father passed away. My unique name leads directly to my address. My daughter is a young Black Jewish woman with a disability, exactly the vulnerable people my doxxer, Tasha Kaminsky, claimed to care for while publicly offering a bounty for information about my private identity.

I contacted Kaminsky’s husband, Elad Gross, an aspiring Missouri AG candidate, hoping to resolve this quietly. Instead, my attempt at discretion was announced publicly. Rabbi Andy Khan called me a “shande,” joining sporadic harassment campaigns alongside Max Sparber (self-proclaimed award-winning journalist), Ilana Cruger-Zaken (occasional writer), Jimmy Rothchild (If Not Now org Chicago leader), and Tema Smith.

The Pattern of Intimidation

This group hurled smears, false accusations, and libel for over a year. Kaminsky never clearly stated the harassment wasn’t my doing. Sparber changed his Twitter handle. Ilana became obsessively taunting about my identity. These grown adults, aged 30–50, excused doxing a MENA Jewish woman under false pretenses.

Numerous tweets accused me of working for the Israeli government, being paid to tweet, operating sock accounts, and bullying followers. Tema Smith even suggested I might have been behind an abusive account issuing rape threats to women in 2019. This group had blocked me before any alleged “transphobe incident” and never directly interacted with me, yet they continued smear campaigns while establishing rules they themselves violated.

After weeks of escalation, Kaminsky grew bolder, believing she should punish my “bad behavior.” I consulted cyber security experts, who discovered Kaminsky had previously been served a restraining order for adult abuse and stalking. Clearly, she wouldn’t simply relent.

Her threats intensified, using phrases like “warning shot” in response to critical tweets about If Not Now activists and cartoonist Eli Valley, all adults and public figures notably hostile to the Jewish Zionist community. Where were these vulnerable children she mentioned? Nowhere.

The Breaking Point

After a minor disagreement with Seth Rogen about my anonymity, another wave of harassment justified my doxing. Engineer and hacker Russel Neiss, an old friend of Kaminsky’s who worked with her at MaTovu in St. Louis, posted a picture of my family in response to a follower’s question about whether he condoned my doxing.

I’d never spoken to Neiss. My security team couldn’t identify me from my Twitter account alone, yet he somehow located my family. Around that time, one of my Google accounts was hacked with notification of a data breach. I noticed LinkedIn searchers from Sefaria, Neiss’s current workplace.

My security team confirmed my information wasn’t appearing in hacker forums connected to that specific group, but QAnon showed significant interest in my Twitter account. Their recommendation was simple: leave Twitter. That’s apparently all anyone can do to protect themselves nowadays.

The Real Fear

I don’t fear Kaminsky showing up at my door. I’m not worried about hatred from a few Jewish people online who can’t coexist with my account. I fear actual hate groups targeting Jewish people online: Nazis, conspiracists, anarchists, people honestly targeting you for your beliefs and identity, not pretending to be “Sesame Street heroes of children.”

The Emotional Reality

I’ve wrestled with discussing what targeting and doxing campaigns feel like. My instinct is always to appear brave, expose malicious actors, but hide my hurt. Don’t show fear. Never let them see the pain. But the pain is real and devastating.

From the moment Kaminsky offered a bounty, I arranged for worst-case scenarios. I had heart-to-heart conversations with family members who would be impacted. I confided in few trusted friends to monitor online chatter and document threats. I spent enormous time and resources scrubbing personal information from the internet.

The U.S. Problem

This doxing situation is uniquely American. About two dozen websites serve as “find people” databases, illegal and unavailable elsewhere. They collect addresses, phone numbers, emails, employment records, certificates, and all social media presence. If your name is John Smith, you’re probably safe. But with a unique name like mine, you’re found instantly, along with your daughter, her grandmother, and her father.

Once I realized I was officially doxed and Jewish community members were spreading my information exponentially, my workplace was posted, my address next, I sent my daughter away to friends. I contacted my security “team” and monitored threatening chatter while trying to maintain my sanity.

For three straight nights, I couldn’t sleep. Everything felt cloudy and confusing. Anxiety manifested as physical pain, making eating impossible. But I had to hold together. I’m a mother and a woman who’s endured worse. I had to deal with whatever came.

Community Response

Watching Jewish community leaders like Tema Smith, Alex Zeldin, Carli Pildis, and Ruti Regan deny doxing’s grave harm while whitewashing and excusing it was enraging, painful, and deeply damaging to our entire online community.

Many who strongly disagree with me have denounced this act, understanding that red lines exist in online interaction. Nothing would please our real enemies more than watching us tear each other down while providing personal information to them.

Ongoing Reflection

I still question whether it’s all worth it. How did we reach a place where Jewish women online no longer feel safe? How did personal vendetta and revenge compel Jewish people to harass, intimidate, stalk, and dox us?

Many with different perspectives have come out against doxing, recognizing that certain boundaries shouldn’t be crossed.

What I know is that regardless of my online presence, incredible people of all backgrounds continue fighting antisemitism and bigotry. Those seeking to vilify us cannot win, they’ll simply move to their next target brave enough to speak their mind.

Addendum (August 9, 2021)

On August 9, 2021, antisemitic personality Anna Rajagopal, who promoted PFLP terrorists and called for violent intifada, used the doxed information to post my legal name and an unauthorized personal photograph, triggering a second doxing wave with smears and lies from accounts like Ilana Cruger-Zaken, Andy Ratto, Em Cohen, Izzy, Isabella, and Ariel Scariot, cheered on by Jimmy Rothschild, Theo S., and Koshersemite.

There’s irony in those fearing modern fascists and Nazis while using fascist doxing and intimidation tactics against a MENA Jewish woman raising a Black Jewish daughter alone.

They’re well aware my name is unique. They successfully located my address and phone number themselves. They’ve produced zero evidence of my supposed evil, yet endangering two Jewish lives poses no problem when their egos are bruised defending their vile ideology, rooted in rejecting Jewish identity and peoplehood.

In five years on Twitter, I’ve fought more antisemitism than any of these personalities while they provide Jewish bodies to our enemies on silver platters. My Twitter presence won’t defeat antisemitism, but my absence won’t free Palestine either. My name will live in their minds because that’s how small and insignificant their lives are, driven by ego, empty and loveless outside social media, rejected by their community, seeking revenge with a justice so warped it centers their ego rather than their people.