Digital safety

Women's Aid is hearing from women using our services about various forms of digitally abuse where technology is being used by abusive boyfriends and ex-boyfriends to monitor and control women, particularly younger women.

Digital abuse of women includes online and technology abuse, online shaming and stalking and the non-consensual sharing of explicit images.

• Women are harassed and monitored online, through mobile phones and texting.
• Abusers often combine digital abuse with more traditional offline stalking tactics such as following, damaging property and abusive calls.
• Abusive partners use the internet and social media to control and stalk women.
• Women have personal details shared or lies spread about them and are impersonated by their abuser online.
• A common form of digital abuse we hear about are damaging rumours being spread about women both personally and professionally and having sexually explicit images and videos that were taken with consent posted online without consent (‘revenge porn’).
• Abusers have advertised their partners on escort sites without their consent or knowledge. Abusers have used specific spyware to monitor the woman, find out her online and bank account passwords and keep track of her whereabouts.

Useful resources

• Download the new Women's Aid and Facebook Guide to Staying Safe on Facebook.
• Download our Digital Abuse of Women Guide including information on image based sexual abuse.
• Read about our conference in November 2015 exploring the issue of Digital Abuse of Women.
• Download the Digital Stalking: A Guide to Technology Risks for Victims (Please note that some of the information in the guide may be UK specific). Reproduced with kind permission from the author, Jennifer Perry, a guide on Digitally Assisted Stalking recently produced in the UK by Women's Aid and the Network for Surviving Stalking.

Read more about:

• Spyware
• Email safety
• Social networking safety
• Phone safety
• Delete your browsing history
• What to do if someone has shared sexually explicit images of you

If you would like to speak to someone in confidence call our National Freephone Helpline on 1800 341 900, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.