Digital Safety

Journalists are frequently at risk of being harassed online in an attempt by hostile actors to intimidate or force them into silence. The harassment, most commonly directed at female journalists, often includes threats of violence against the journalist and their family and friends.

Stef Schrader was on vacation in Germany last year when spam messages started to flood her inbox. Seeing random emails from Macy’s—and job alerts for the position of “Chief Idiot”—she realized someone had signed her work email up to dozens of email lists.

Ask any female journalist about harassment or safety while on assignment and they’ll likely have a story to tell.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has launched a new, updated Digital Safety Kit for journalists looking to better protect themselves, their sources, and their information. The kit, produced by CPJ’s Emergencies Response Team, combines six bite-sized safety notes on different topics in an accessible format that is easy to digest.

Journalists should protect themselves and their sources by keeping up-to-date on the latest digital security news and threats such as hacking, phishing, and surveillance. Journalists should think about the information they are responsible for and what could happen if it falls into the wrong hands, and take measures to defend their accounts, devices, communications, and…

In the lead up to South Africa’s elections in May, the Electoral Commission of South Africa accredited CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal as an international observer, monitoring press freedom. Quintal found that unlike 1994–when she covered the violence of the country’s first democratic elections–journalists in 2019 cited online harassment and threats as the biggest…

Journalists across India are at risk of physical and digital attack in retaliation for their reporting. And during election campaigns, these dangers can increase. As the country went to the polls in recent weeks, CPJ’s India correspondent Kunal Majumder traveled to Guwahati, Imphal, Agartala, Raipur, Bijapur, and Hyderabad to present CPJ’s election safety kit to…

[EDITOR’S NOTE: See CPJ’s updated safety advisory here https://cpj.org/2019/11/cpj-safety-advisory-journalist-targets-of-pegasus-.php.] New York, May 14, 2019–A vulnerability that infects phones with spyware has been identified in the messaging app WhatsApp, according to reports. The attack targets users of Android and iPhone and involves calling users over WhatsApp. Those targeted report receiving a series of missed calls from…

The long-running political crisis in Venezuela escalated on April 30, 2019, after a civilian and military uprising was thwarted by the government of Nicolás Maduro, according to news reports. Opposition leaders Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo Lopez, accompanied by members of the armed forces, congregated on a highway in eastern Caracas and called upon the armed…

The cybersecurity research group CERTFA has reported an increase in sophisticated phishing attacks against journalists and human rights defenders. These attacks, which are global, have also targeted individuals who use more robust email providers or two-step verification (2FA) for their email and social media accounts.