how to: protect yourself from online harassment
kill switch
Kaleidoscope
4.7 • 635 Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Journalists, public figures, and just about anyone with an online presence today can suddenly face harassment: ranging from nasty posts and replies to real life threats like doxxing. Dexter talks with Ramy Ghaly, a security professional, about how online harassment has gotten worse, how to respond if it happens to you, and what you can do, right now, to prepare and protect yourself.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Resources:
- Pen America’s Online Harassment Field Manual: https://onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:13.8 | A little while back, I called one of my friends up just to say, hey. |
| 0:17.9 | And when they picked up, I could tell they were freaking out. Like, their voice |
| 0:22.5 | was shaking. And I asked what was wrong. And they said, oh, I thought you called me because you saw. |
| 0:28.7 | And I said, saw what? What are you talking about? They said, well, it's all over the internet. |
| 0:32.5 | Haven't you seen it? And I still didn't get it. So it turns out this friend of mine had posted a |
| 0:37.4 | TikTok of themselves talking about something, honestly, pretty innocuous. But some small group of people decided that they didn't like what was being said. And they were being harassed online. I mean, it was really bad. The post was full of hate comments. There were hate messages in the inbox. They'd gotten docks. And someone had found their mother's email address and was sending the family hate mail. I had no idea this was going on. And it really bothered me, not just because people are harassing my friend, but because this was the third friend that this was happening to that month that I knew of. |
| 1:12.7 | I would say most people do deal with online harassment and don't necessarily talk about it or share or express it. |
| 1:21.5 | Rami Galley is a security professional, and he's been working on keeping journalists around the globe safe for over a decade. |
| 1:28.4 | It's sort of like an invisible epidemic of sorts. |
| 1:32.4 | Everyone is so accessible today that sometimes things can just blow up out of proportions. |
| 1:38.9 | And because you're only experiencing it through a screen, people aren't actually fully aware of what |
| 1:45.7 | it is that you're dealing with. |
| 1:47.5 | So it's very isolating. |
| 1:48.7 | Rami actually started his career as a combat medic in the U.S. Marine Corps, and he served |
| 1:53.0 | in Afghanistan. |
| 1:54.5 | His unit responded to everything from backup requests from other units to dealing with suicide |
| 1:58.6 | bombings. |
| 1:59.6 | When I met him in 2018, he was my coworker advice on the security team. |
| 2:03.8 | At first, I just knew him as the guy who helped organize training sessions for people who were |
| 2:07.5 | going to go report on dangerous conflict zones, and he'd tell you how to stay safe out there. |
... |
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