Ethical conduct in digital research is full of grey areas. Disciplinary, institutional and individual norms and conventions developed to support research are challenged, often leaving scholars with a sense of unease or lack of clarity. The growing availability of hacked data is one area. Discussions and debates around the use of these datasets in research are extremely limited. Reviews of the history, culture or morality of the act of hacking are topics that have attracted some scholarly attention. However, how to undertake research with this data is less examined and provides an opportunity for the generation of reflexive ethical practice. This article presents a case study outlining the ethical debates that arose when considering the use of hacked data to examine online far-right violent extremism. It argues that under certain circumstances, researchers can do ethical research with hacked data. However, to do so, we must proactively and continually engage deeply with ethical quandaries and dilemmas.
Waldek et al. (2025) studied this question.