SAN ANTONIO – Could you be the victim of doxing? If you are, you might not even know it.
What you post online can easily make you the target of this 21st-century invasion of privacy.
Doxing: the act of compiling someone's personal information without their permission using sources found online.
That can provide easy access to details you might not want just anyone to know -- your family members' identities, the places you often visit, or where you live.
And you could be helping scammers and crooks do it.
"That personal information is usually gathered by finding sites where the victim themselves have shared that with the public," said FBI Special Agent Michelle Lee.
Most often, it's ocurring on social media sites.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center warns that members of law enforcement are extremely vulnerable.
"Putting up pictures and personal information about wife, kids, family, things of that nature, that's when the officer is really put in a difficult position and it could be used against them," San Antonio Police Department Chief Anthony Trevino said.
You can just as easily become a victim. Posting your contact information, where you work, even photos, all of it makes you that much easier to find.
"Photographs can actually capture the GPS coordinates of where that photo was taken," Lee said.
They can reveal where you are and whether you're at home. But that's a feature than can be turned off on your phone.
So check your privacy settings -- not just for your accounts and devices, but for your loved ones, too.
"If your child is out there and unsupervised, they can be revealing a lot more information than you're comfortable with," Lee said.