Reporter Deletes Tweet Complaining About ‘Aggressive’ Responses When Contacting Doxxed Trucker Convoy Donors
A reporter based in Utah complained on Twitter Thursday that his attempts to contact doxxed Freedom Convoy donors were met with “aggressive” responses.
Thousands of people who donated to the Canadian protest via the crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo had their information released online after the company was hacked.
Reporters from U.S. and Canadian news outlets quickly seized on the list and began hunting down people who donated as little as $40 to the truckers protesting in Ottawa and at the U.S.-Canada border. Some press outlets not only used the data that was hacked, but linked to it and used names of donors in tweets.
Bryan Schott, with the Salt Lake Tribune admitted he was among the members of the press mining the hacked data for a story.
The political reporter said Thursday he had been attempting to hunt down donors from the list by cross-referencing leaked credit cards with Utah zip codes. Schott reported:
The Salt Lake Tribune reviewed a copy of the information, which included names, emails, IP addresses and donation amounts. There were 616 donations from credit cards with Utah ZIP codes in the data.
Those donations totaled $41,206. The average contribution was approximately $67.
The Tribune is working to confirm the identity of several of the donors. Most of the emails were from Gmail or similar platforms. But, some donors used work, professional or .edu accounts. It appears at least one donor is an unsuccessful candidate for municipal office.
The reporter complained on Twitter that his attempts to contact Utahans who donated to Canada’s protest were not well-received.
Schott tweeted: “I’ve been reaching out to people from Utah who appeared on the leaked Canadian trucker donation data. Hoo boy! Some of the replies have been…aggressive to put it mildly.”
The tweet was deleted Thursday afternoon.
Members of the media chasing stories like this were condemned in a bi-partisan fashion this week, with a prominent tweet from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that went viral fast. Omar called it “unconscionable”, joining a chorus of people urging the press to reevaluate their ethics here.
