Federal government moves to criminalise 'doxxing' after publication ...

The federal government will move to criminalise "doxxing" after the details of a WhatsApp group involving hundreds of Jewish Australians were published online.

The government said the legislation, aimed at outlawing the practice of publishing personal details with malicious intent, would be brought to parliament as soon as possible.

The log of the private WhatsApp group, involving Jewish Australians largely working in creative industries, was recently published online.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Nine Radio the incident prompted a decision to move quickly to criminalise the practice.

"I've asked the attorney-general to bring forward legislation in response to the privacy act review, including laws that deal with so-called doxxing, which is basically the malicious publication of private information online," he said.

Lobby groups such as the Executive Council of Australian Jewry welcomed the new laws, having publicly called for the change in recent days.

Doxxing is commonly defined as publishing a person's private details, including names, addresses, emails and phone numbers with the intent of causing harm, such as harassment.

Pro-Palestinian advocates who shared the transcript from the WhatsApp group have defended the move as being in the public interest and rejected the suggestion it was doxxing. They argue personal details beyond names were largely redacted.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the laws would fold into already-planned changes to privacy laws.

"The increasing use of online platforms to harm people through the malicious release of their personal and private information is a deeply disturbing development," he said.

"The recent targeting of members of the Australian Jewish community through doxxing was shocking, but sadly a far from isolated event."

The laws are expected to be tailored to avoid impacting public-interest journalism.

Details of how the laws will operate are relatively scant, but some are already questioning how doxxing can be policed.

Nigel Phair says finding doxxing culprits to prosecute may be very hard. (ABC News)

Nigel Phair, a professor in cybersecurity at Monash University, said finding culprits to prosecute could be very hard.

"It's pretty easy to have a degree of anonymity online," he said.

"It's pretty easy to set up social media profiles to share this information, and use jurisdictions far from where you live, to use devices that you don't normally do, and basically obstruct who you are.

"So actually trying to find who the people are that have released the information is super difficult."

He said people who discovered their personal details being were shared online should probably first contact the social media platform directly.

"The best bet people have got, really, is to go to the individual platforms where their information might be, and make formal requests for them to remove the posts," he said.