Transgender Twitch streamer vows to leave Canada after doxxing, hack

A popular transgender Twitch streamer and activist says she is planning on leaving Canada after continuous online harassment is spilling into real life.

Streamer Clara Sorrenti, known online as Keffals, says she will travel to Europe to stay with friends – for the time being and until she feels safe – after being doxxed, hacked and threatened.

“I’m really going day by day on this,” she said. “Every couple of days, there’s a new development. And I keep getting shocked that things could get worse than they already have.”

BACKGROUND: Popular Trans Canadian Twitch streamer raided

Earlier this month, Sorrenti was a victim of “swatting” after someone online impersonated her and made violent threats to politicians in London, Ont.

That led to police officers showing up at her door and arresting her at gunpoint.

Sorrenti also says she was “deadnamed” by London police throughout the entire process – the use of a trans person’s former name. She legally changed her name more than a decade ago.

Sorrenti, who has 47,000 Twitch followers, had previously been doxxed and asked to be placed on a police no-swatting list. London’s police chief has vowed to catch whoever was behind the swatting.

Tracked to hotel, then hacked

After that incident – when her computer was returned to her by London police – the popular streamer says she left home, went to a hotel with her fiancé and posted a photo online of their cat on the hotel bed.

It was her way of letting her fans know she was OK. But it also alerted her internet trolls.

“In less than six hours, they figured out what hotel we were staying at based on the stripes on the bed sheet, by cross-referencing it with all other hotel rooms in the city.

“Later in the day, pizzas started arriving ordered in my deadname to the hotel.”

That’s when Sorrenti decided to leave, again fearing for her safety. She told her online community she would only be staying at Airbnbs after that – her way of throwing off those actively seeking her location.

Instead she went to another hotel, where they found her again.

“The hotel told me to come downstairs and I saw that well over $500 of food was ordered on my Uber account. Because my Uber account was hacked.

“They got access to my cellphone number, they got access to the address that I was staying at.”

Sorrenti has reported it to London police’s cybercrimes unit , but she isn’t sure they have the resources to handle the case.

Protesting online forum Kiwi Farms

She believes the latest round of being targeted by people online was because she started a protest against Kiwi Farms, a notorious message board with subforums known for mocking, doxxing and harassing people online.

Sorrenti is calling for the site to be de-platformed, pointing to suicides caused by harassment she says originates from Kiwi Farms.

“In 2018, Chloe Sagal, a trans video game developer, after being harassed over an extended period of time by Kiwi Farms set herself on fire in a public park in Portland. And then in 2020, a non-binary retro video game emulator developer took their own life, again after harassment from Kiwi Farms.”

Sorrenti is asking Cloudflare, an internet security company, to drop Kiwi Farms as a client.

CityNews reached out to Cloudflare on this issue but did not immediately receive a response.

Fareed Khan from Canadians United Against Hate says online harassment is part of the reality for those who speak out for marginalized people.

“I myself have received death threats on social media. I’ve been targeted,” said Khan. “And I went into this with my eyes wide open, knowing that was a very real possibility.

“We need to be aware, but we also need to continue to do this work. Because the fact is, if we don’t speak out, those voices basically rule the online social network community and things get worse in terms of hate, racism, bigotry and xenophobia.”

—With files from Xiaoli Li