Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb

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It's definitely weird, but there's a reason (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/25/mi6-gareth-wil...) that they considered this as a real possibility:

> But his former landlady, Jennifer Elliot, told the inquest that three years before his death, she and her husband had heard Williams call for help at 1.30am from the annex flat he was renting from them in Cheltenham, where he worked at GCHQ.

> They let themselves in with the spare key and found the codes expert lying on his back on the bed, in boxer shorts, with his hands tied to the bed posts with material so tight it had cut his wrists.

> In a statement read to the inquest, Elliot said she and her husband had both been in shock. Her husband asked Williams: "What the bloody hell are you doing?" Williams told them: "I just wanted to see if could get myself free."

> The statement added that he did not appear sexually aroused, and was "very embarrassed, panicky and apologetic."

> The couple, who never spoke to anyone about the incident, said they concluded it was "sexual rather than escapology".

An association that's largely created by these tabloids in the first place.

"that's what "general public" wants to read about"

Maybe, but if that's what's required, they should be requesting an interview with him and only reveal what he agrees to reveal. If he wishes to, that could lead to a more insightful look at a man and his motivations rather than random paragraphs about pizza and surfing.

If he chose not to reveal anything, a responsible journalist would accept that and understand that the man has reasons for wishing to stay anonymous. Not dig into his information and publish it anyway, leading to both him and his friends being needlessly harassed for preventing crimes. At the very least, this could lead to future would-be Samaritans from deploying fixes or publicly detailing their methods.

At least they manages to increase their clicks with some facts rather than just making things up, I suppose.

If a journalist can find it - any internet layman who knows how to Google can find it.

Once you personal preferences because you happen to be ideologically aligned with a particular news source, I have a hard time seeing how pretty much any of the major mainstream media outlets is better or worse than any of the others. (Yes, this includes the New York Times, too.)

Ironically, I was just complaining on HN a couple of days ago about the near-death of investigative journalism and how when historians go to assign a date for that event it'll probably be in the past. So it's even more egregious in some ways than I think it initially sounds that these journalists dox'ed this guy... they don't seem to have the resources to do much truly investigative journalism nowadays, and this is what they spend those scant resources on! Why not just come out and tell us all that they're too afraid nowadays to do any investigative journalism on anyone with even a hint of power?