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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privacy-and-safety

Privacy and Safety

Privacy and safety are often treated as the same goal in anti-violence technology, but for a Victim-Survivor they pull in opposite directions and must be balanced deliberately. The data that makes a safety tool useful — real-time Location Sharing, cloud backups, message logs kept as Evidence Documentation — is exactly the data an abuser will try to reach if they retain access to a device, account, or family plan. NNEDV’s Safety Net Project frames technology safety as protecting “safety, privacy, accessibility, and civil rights” together, and stresses that the burden should fall on holding perpetrators accountable, not solely on survivors restricting themselves. Yet practical safety planning still requires hard privacy choices: which device is trustworthy, which accounts are compromised, and what should never be stored where an abuser can find it.

This is why every safety app sits in tension here. A design that collects rich location history to “build evidence” also builds a honeypot that Stalkerware or a coercive partner can exploit, and the Datafication of MeToo critique shows how such collection can become extraction rather than protection. Privacy-protective alternatives respond with data minimisation, on-device storage, encryption, and Discreet Access, and safety guidance cautions that even removing monitoring can escalate danger if an abuser feels they’ve “lost control.” Getting this balance right is the central problem of Survivor-Centered Design and Trauma-Informed Design.

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Tension withPersonal Safety Apps
Threatened byStalkerware
Related toDiscreet Access
Related toSurvivor-Centered Design

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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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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

trauma-informed-design

Trauma-Informed Design

Trauma-informed design builds tools around the realities of people who have experienced violence: defaults that fail safe, control left in the user’s hands, language that validates rather than directs, and the assumption that a device may be monitored. It is closely tied to Survivor-Centered Design and underpins discreet, dignified experiences. Insight Exchange’s resources — My Safety Kit, Responders Lab, No Hidden Door — are practical expressions of the approach.

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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

personal-safety-apps

Personal Safety Apps

Personal safety apps are mobile applications that help a user summon help, share their whereabouts, or deter harm. Most combine a Panic Button, Location Sharing, and a Trusted Network, and many connect to Crisis Hotlines and Resources. They span two broad postures: alarm-and-summon tools aimed at acute danger, and network-and-intervene tools rooted in Bystander Intervention that aim to prevent harm before it escalates.

The central design tension is Privacy and Safety: the same capabilities that protect (continuous location, contact lists, always-on microphones) can be turned against a user — see Location Tracking Abuse and Stalkerware — so survivor-facing tools must be weighed with Trauma-Informed Design in mind.

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Member apps assert instance_of::[[Personal Safety Apps]]; see backlinks.

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.

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victim-survivor

Victim-Survivor

Victim-survivor is the term used in much lived-experience-led practice (including Insight Exchange’s) for a person who has been subjected to violence and abuse. It deliberately holds both realities at once — the harm done to a person and their ongoing agency — and signals a stance of centring that person’s own meaning, pace and decisions, as in Trauma-Informed Design and Survivor-Centered Design.

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Related toTrauma-Informed Design
Subjected toGender-Based Violence

domestic-family-and-sexualised-violence

Domestic Family and Sexualised Violence

Domestic, family and sexualised violence (DFSV) is the framing used across Australia — and by Insight Exchange — to name the spectrum of violence and abuse occurring within intimate, family and domestic relationships, including its sexualised dimensions. It maps onto Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence while deliberately keeping family relationships and lived experience in view.

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Subtype ofGender-Based Violence
CentresVictim-Survivor

intimate-partner-violence

Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is defined by the WHO as behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm — including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours. It is the most common form of Domestic Violence and is best understood not as isolated assaults but as an ongoing pattern of domination; the surveillance, isolation and monitoring of Coercive Control are often the core of the abuse rather than incidental to it. This is also why Tech-Enabled Abuse is so potent in IPV: an abuser with shared accounts, devices and location data has ready-made tools for control.

IPV is strikingly prevalent. WHO estimates that about 25.8% of ever-partnered women aged 15–49 have experienced physical and/or sexual IPV at least once in their lifetime, making it the most widespread form of Gender-Based Violence against women. The Lancet’s 2018 global analysis similarly found roughly one in four ever-partnered women affected over their lifetime, with around 13% reporting partner violence in the past year. IPV is also a leading context for femicide: a large share of women killed worldwide die at the hands of an intimate partner.

In this vault

Subtype ofGender-Based Violence
Related toCoercive Control
Related toDomestic Violence
Manifests inTech-Enabled Abuse

Sources

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)02664-7/fulltext

Tags: #concept #violence

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