On Trans Day of Visibility, a room at Trans Pecos in Ridgewood, Queens, filled with trans people trying to do something most internet users never think to do: find themselves online before someone else does. The workshop, called “404: Deadname Not Found,” walked participants through tools and websites meant to expose how much of a person’s life can still be sitting in the open.
Using services such as IntelBase, PimEyes and haveibeenpwned, attendees searched for addresses, selfies, passwords, old names, aliases and other personal information that could be pulled from the public web. They were also shown pages where they could ask for data to be removed, and options such as Kanary and DeleteMe for paying someone else to handle the cleanup. Anna said she wanted to make sure her information was safe and that no one was trying to harvest her data, adding that in a world of hyper-surveillance she wanted everything under wraps. Ryan said it was great to know how to find information that might still be out there, and added, “We have to protect ourselves.”
The workshop was part of a push by Imani Thompson, who started hosting free workshops at queer bars in Brooklyn a year ago. It came as a response to discriminatory bills and executive orders that are rapidly reshaping trans rights in the United States, and as trans people continue to face a disproportionately high risk of being doxed online. Deadnames and other sensitive information are frequently dug up on right-wing hate forums like KiwiFarms and on social media sites such as Elon Musk’s X, where a few searches can turn private history into a weapon.
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That is what gave the session its edge. It was not just about privacy in the abstract; it was about teaching people how to verify what strangers can already see, then pushing back before that material is used against them. For attendees, the lesson was blunt: if the internet has already collected your past, the safest move may be to find it first.
