stalkerware

Stalkerware

Stalkerware (or spouseware) is commercially available monitoring software — often marketed for “parental control” or “employee monitoring” — installed covertly on a victim’s device to read messages, track location, and capture activity. It is the sharp edge of Tech-Enabled Abuse: a consumer app turned instrument of Coercive Control and Stalking. Any safety tool that stores sensitive data on a device an abuser can access must treat stalkerware as part of its threat model — one reason Discreet Access and minimal data retention matter.

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coercive-control

Coercive Control

Coercive control is a pattern of domination — isolation, intimidation, monitoring, and financial and emotional control — that defines much Intimate Partner Violence and Domestic Violence, and which physical assault alone fails to capture. It is the dynamic that makes Tech-Enabled Abuse so potent: surveillance and information-control are not incidental to the abuse, they are the abuse. Tools designed for stranger danger often miss it; survivor-centred resources such as My Safety Kit are built around it.

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Subtype ofGender-Based Violence
Manifests inTech-Enabled Abuse
Related toStalking

location-tracking-abuse

Location Tracking Abuse

Location tracking abuse is the covert or coercive use of a person’s geolocation against them — through GPS apps, “find my” services, shared family-plan settings, vehicle telematics in smart cars, or cheap Bluetooth trackers slipped into a bag or car. It is the dark inversion of Location Sharing: the very mechanism that lets a Panic Button say “come and get me, here” becomes, in an abuser’s hands, a way to know where a Victim-Survivor is at all times. NNEDV’s Safety Net Project warns that in some tragic cases GPS devices and apps have aided an offender in locating a victim to commit murder, or were enabled without the victim’s knowledge. It is a core tactic of Coercive Control and a primary engine of Stalking.

The tracking can be installed directly via Stalkerware, surfaced through accounts the abuser still controls, or carried out with commodity hardware never designed for surveillance — a problem severe enough that Bluetooth trackers like AirTags prompted dedicated anti-stalking detection features and Congressional attention. Because removing a tracker can signal to an abuser that they have “lost control” and trigger escalation, technology safety planning treats discovery and removal as something to do carefully with an advocate, not impulsively. This is why location features in Personal Safety Apps such as Círculo encrypt position data and send it only to a Trusted Network, rather than logging or exposing it.

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tech-enabled-abuse

Tech-Enabled Abuse

Tech-enabled abuse (also called technology-facilitated abuse) is the use of everyday digital tools — phones, accounts, smart-home devices, trackers, social media — to monitor, control, intimidate, or harm a partner, ex-partner, or family member. It is rarely a separate “online” problem: surveillance and harassment through devices typically operate as one channel of a broader pattern of Coercive Control, and they frequently overlap with offline Stalking and physical violence. NNEDV’s Safety Net Project notes that abusers are “often very determined to maintain control,” and technology is one of many tools they use; the abuse “does not always remain online and could escalate to other forms of violence.” Australia’s eSafety Commissioner frames it as conduct including monitoring and surveillance, cyberstalking with tracking, impersonation, hacking, and harassment, deployed within Intimate Partner Violence and Domestic Family and Sexualised Violence.

The category spans covert spyware (Stalkerware), GPS and Bluetooth Location Tracking Abuse, account takeover, and the weaponising of shared devices and family plans. Because the same features that protect a Victim-Survivor — Location Sharing, cloud backups, “find my device” — can be turned against them, tech-enabled abuse sits in permanent tension with Privacy and Safety and is the threat model any Personal Safety Apps design must take seriously through Discreet Access, minimal data retention, and Trauma-Informed Design.

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discreet-access

Discreet Access

Discreet access is the cluster of UX patterns that let a person reach safety tools without an abuser, bystander, or a monitored device noticing. In practice this means disguised or “cloaked” launchers (apps that present as a news reader or weather app), silent or stealth alerting that fires an SOS while an innocuous home screen stays on display, fake-call screens that fabricate an excuse to leave a room, hidden trigger gestures (e.g. a triple-tap on the screen edge), and a deliberate refusal to store call logs or alert history that could later be discovered. Some pilots go further and ship with no app name and no obvious icon, sending an in-app call to police without the user having to speak. These choices assume the threat model of Tech-Enabled Abuse and Coercive Control: that the device itself may be surveilled, and that being seen seeking help is its own danger.

Discreet access is a concrete expression of Trauma-Informed Design — control left with the user, defaults that fail safe — and it is a defensive response to Stalkerware and Location Tracking Abuse. It overlaps with the Panic Button (the quietest possible trigger) and with quick-exit affordances that scrub a screen instantly. The same cloaking that protects a Victim-Survivor can, however, create a Privacy and Safety tension: hidden tools are harder to audit, and a feature designed to evade an abuser can resemble the very disguise techniques abusers use, so the design must center the survivor’s own assessment of risk.

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Part ofTrauma-Informed Design
Protects againstStalkerware
Related toPanic Button
Tension withPrivacy and Safety

Sources

https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/24/domestic-violence-app/
https://violencereductionalliance.co.uk/hollie-guard/
https://www.techsafety.org/spyware-and-stalkerware-phone-surveillance

Tags: #concept #ux #safety

stalking

Stalking

Stalking is a perpetrator’s use of a repeated, unwanted pattern of harassing or threatening tactics that causes a victim to feel fear or concern for their safety. Tactics range from following, showing up at a home or workplace, and sending unwanted gifts or messages, to surreptitious, technology-facilitated methods such as GPS tracking, spying through cameras or Stalkerware, and relentless contact via phone, text and social media. The defining elements are repetition and induced fear; this overlaps closely with Coercive Control and with Location Tracking Abuse, since the same monitoring that terrorises a victim also enables further control. Most victims know their stalker — intimate partners and acquaintances are the most common perpetrators.

It is widespread. The CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey finds that roughly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 10 men experience stalking during their lifetime, with state-level female lifetime prevalence ranging from about 15.6% to 35.2%. Nearly 58% of female and 49% of male victims were first stalked before age 25. US Bureau of Justice Statistics data has estimated millions of stalking and harassment victims each year. Crucially, the technology-facilitated tactics that require no physical proximity are often the hardest to detect, so their true prevalence is likely underestimated — a core challenge for Tech-Enabled Abuse response.

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Sources

https://www.cdc.gov/intimate-partner-violence/about/about-stalking.html
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus_rev.pdf

Tags: #concept #violence

location-sharing

Location Sharing

Location sharing transmits a user’s real-time or on-demand GPS position to chosen recipients — the feature that lets a Panic Button mean “come and get me, here.” It is one of the most protective capabilities in safety tech and one of the most dangerous: the same mechanism, in the hands of an abuser, becomes Location Tracking Abuse. Privacy-focused tools such as Círculo respond by encrypting location and sending it only to a Trusted Network, never tracking or exposing it.