About a year ago, Kristen Sotakoun casually perused her TikTok. She discovered a woman wanting everyone to guess her age. Sotakoun said: I don't need to guess, because I found it on your social media.

The 33-year-old had 30 followers at the time. Now, she has 1.1 million, and regularly posts about "consensual doxxing."

"It was total accident," Sotakoun says of her newfound hobby-turned-career of lightly stalking people online. The one-time Chicago restaurant server now makes enough money as a TikTok content creator to produce these videos full-time.

People have criticized her for the term she made up. There's nothing "consensual" about doxxing, when you publicly expose someone's personal information (such as a home address or phone number) in order to cause harm. But that's just it: she's facetious. Sotakoun doesn't jump down the rabbit holes of the internet on a quest to find someone's birthday unless they specifically ask (hence the "consensual" part).

Think of her as TikTok's Nancy Drew. "I look at it like a puzzle, and I've always loved puzzles," she says, and also wants to educate people about their online presence. Experts say "consensual doxxing" can be a useful tool for learning about how much information you've put out online about yourself or can simply be a fun activity – but consider it a cautionary tale, too.

"While people on TikTok aren't doing anything malicious with the information, people with intent to harass or harm could pick up doxxing techniques from these videos," says Kimberly Vered Shashoua, licensed clinical social worker. "Unfortunately, these videos highlight an uncomfortable truth: our lives are way more exposed online than we'd like to imagine."

'The most creative way'

The first TikTok Sotakoun made about "consensual doxxing," only one person commented. After her second video: Hundreds of comments per day. That number has held steady – she picks one or two out of these leads per day to pursue – partially because of the effort she puts into the task.

"It's evolved into people wanting to see the most creative way I found it," she says.

In her first viral video, for example, the subject in question had no videos, his profile picture had a cartoon filter over his face and the only remarkable attribute was that he was wearing glasses. She dug deep through his followers to find a family member, scrolled through her likes on Facebook and found someone else's profile picture where a man was wearing glasses. It correlated with a comment he made on TikTok about being an engineer, and that he lived in Florida, and so on.

"For many people, consensual doxxing is like a treasure hunt," Vered Shashoua says. "While making waves on TikTok, consensual doxxing has been a form of entertainment for awhile, such as in shows like 'Catfish.'"

'Your digital footprint is not as good as you think'

Sotakoun is not perfect. Sometimes it's impossible to find people's birthdays when their profile is private, they have no followers, they follow no one and/or their username just has the word "user" and a bunch of numbers.

"Obviously, I cannot do anything with that," she says. She estimates she finds 70% to 80% of the people whose birthdays she looks up.

A note about the method to her madness: She doesn't use public records, just social media.

"I want to try to show you that info that you have provided, is the reason that I found your birthday, even though you think you're locked down, your digital footprint is not as good as you think," she says.

Brad Fulton, associate professor of management and social policy at the Indiana University – Bloomington, adds: "It’s important for people to know how much of their personal information can be found online, and consensual doxxing can provide a relatively safe way for someone to discover the extent of their online exposure."

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'The FBI friend of the group'

Sometimes people reach out asking her for tasks beyond birthdays – like to help solve cases. While flattering, she leaves that up to crime-fighting professionals.

"Everybody has the FBI friend of the group. But TikTok has really shown me that hey, I think maybe I'm pretty good at this," she says.

Of course, people may take the wrong lessons away from these videos (i.e. doxxing someone for real). But the positive response has outweighed the negative for Sotakoun.

"I'm hoping that it reaches people who are looking to be more private on the internet," she says. "I'm hoping that the greater good is happening here, and that people will watch my videos and say, 'oh, I need to follow these methods so I can be more protected myself on the internet' as opposed to people using it for more nefarious purposes."

Interesting:A TikToker went viral for blaming being late to work on 'time blindness.' Is it a real thing?

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