“I never imagined that what’s happening right now could ever happen. It didn’t dawn on us that we would come under attack” said one school librarian in the 2025 documentary The Librarians.
She was among the numerous Texas librarians who found themselves on the frontlines of a battle to keep books on shelves and in schools in 2021, when state representative Matt Krause circulated a list of 850 books he felt should be banned from school libraries. As librarians like her fought for students’ freedom to read, they were targeted by a wave of abuse and vitriol, including physical intimidation, death threats, smear campaigns, and doxing–the publishing of sensitive private information online.
Harassment—which can unfold both online and offline—operates in tandem with coordinated campaigns to ban books and undermine access to information in libraries and public schools. Abuse can push librarians and educators to self-censor, leave online spaces, or in some instances, leave the field altogether. The mental toll of online abuse can also wear librarians down, making them feel that book banning is normal, harassment is inevitable, and that it’s easier to take books off shelves than deal with abuse.
It’s important to remember that book bans disproportionately target certain categories of books: those written by authors of color, LGBTQ+ authors, and women; and those that deal with themes of racism, sexuality, gender, and history. So when campaigns to ban books subject educators and librarians to harassment and vitriol, libraries and other educational spaces not only become less free, but also less equitable, and less representative.
As book bans continue to proliferate in libraries and school districts across the U.S., so too does abuse. At a recent Doxing Defense session organized by PEN America and the American Library Association (ALA), over 60% of participants who responded to a survey said that they had either experienced online abuse personally, or witnessed a colleague experience online abuse due to their work.172 participants out of more than 300 session attendees responded to our survey.
Despite the prevalence and impact of harassment campaigns, librarians and educators are not powerless and they are not alone. They are standing up for themselves and one another and collaborating with community groups and nonprofits to take charge of their online safety.
Here are three steps from our Doxing Defense session that librarians and educators can take to protect themselves online:
1. Practice good password hygiene.
Good password hygiene is foundational to protecting your personal information from hacking, which is one of the most common online abuse tactics. Make sure that all of your accounts –but particularly your most sensitive accounts like your bank accounts, email accounts, and cloud storage– have long, unique passwords (16+ characters).
Password managers are one of the most effective ways to protect yourself from hacking. They help secure your accounts by generating long secure passwords, storing them safely for you, and filling them in for you automatically when you need to log in. It is important that the password manager you use is encrypted. 1Password, DashLane, and Bitwarden are a few good options.
Usernames and passwords can be compromised by a data breach, which is when a company holding your information is hacked and that data is made accessible. You can go to haveibeenpwned and enter your email addresses to check if your accounts have been affected by data breaches. Change the login information for any affected accounts, and remember that if you use the same password across multiple accounts, a data breach on any one of those accounts will make all of your other accounts with that same password and username vulnerable as well.
Check out our full guide on password hygiene for more.
2. ‘Dox’ yourself (sort of) to clean up your online footprint.
Doxing was one of the biggest concerns of workshop attendees. Many were worried about their private information being published online, but didn’t know how to find it, or how to take it down. We recommend that users “think like a doxer” to figure out what information about them is available online. Sensitive information can include a home address, birthday, or the full names of family members. Note that doxing yourself can be emotionally taxing, so make sure to take breaks and practice self-care as you work through this guidance.
Start simple by Googling yourself, including variations of your name, your phone number, and your address, ideally using an incognito window. Then try the same thing, but use a privacy-preserving search engine like Brave or DuckDuckGo.
Next, see what information data brokers like Spokeo, Intelius, AnyWho, and Whitepages have about you. Data brokers are companies that collect and sell personal information like addresses, phone numbers, and emails. And then, audit your social media profiles, including past posts and activity, looking out for private sensitive information that you can delete or make less visible.
Check out our guide on “Why You Should Dox Yourself (Sort Of)” for more detailed, step-by-step guidance on finding out what information about you is publically available online.
Once you know what information about you is out there, you can clean up your digital footprint. You can opt out of data brokers to reduce your risk for doxing. You can subscribe to a paid data scrubbing service like EasyOptOuts, Optery, or DeleteMe, which will do this for you, or you can do it yourself using a resource like the Big Ass Data Broker Opt Out List. Tighten your settings on social media, and consider deleting old posts that accidentally expose personal information such as your birthday, location, and family member’s names and photos.
3. Reach out to your friends, colleagues, and allies.
Previous PEN America research has shown that peer support is one of the most effective ways to reduce the impact of online abuse, and session participants echoed this sentiment. One participant wrote that “meeting as a group [and] learning that I am not alone if I’m feeling stressed about the info on the internet about me” was their greatest takeaway.
If you are concerned about online abuse, reach out to trusted friends, colleagues, and allies. Consider coming up with an action plan to improve your digital safety (check out our Online Harassment Field Manual and Digital Safety Snacks for ideas) and meeting as a group to work through guidance together. One session participant suggested that librarians who want to take steps to protect themselves online “create a buddy system to make it more fun and hold [themselves] accountable.”
If you are experiencing online abuse, you don’t have to face it alone. Consider asking trusted friends and allies for help managing the abuse. You can delegate documentation, ask your community to speak up in your defense, or simply ask your friends to bring ice cream and lend an ear. If you know someone facing online abuse, check out our guide on being a supportive ally or bystander to them. If you’re a librarian facing online abuse or other safety concerns because of your work, reach out to digitalsafety[at]pen.org.
If you are interested in collaborating with us to host a training for a group of librarians, check out our training program and keep an eye out for future public programming on our Events page.
