Exploring technology safety in the context of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and violence against women.
Managed by the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), this blog explores the intersection between technology, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and violence against women.
Safety Net focuses on the intersection of technology and abuse, and we work to address how that abuse impacts the safety and privacy of survivors. Our team provides expert training and technical assistance, creates and disseminates resources, and influences conversations on technology abuse and safety globally. Safety Net is a project of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
In our contemporary world, it has been increasingly important for survivors to have access to secure online communication channels to make plans, store and send evidence, and seek help – all of which necessitates encryption. Encryption can be used to protect data stored on survivors’, service providers’, and consumer companies’ devices and accounts. Encryption is critical to survivors’ privacy and safety.
Read MoreSafety Net is excited to announce our new and updated resources (below). We hope these materials will help survivors and victim service providers who are trying to navigate technology, privacy, and safety. All of the materials are available in both English and Spanish.
Data Brokers: What they are and what you can do about them
This resource explains the risks to survivor privacy posed by data brokers and different potential strategies to address this issue in privacy planning. It is an overhaul of the previous resource on data brokers and contains new content. The intended audience is survivors and victim service providers.
Removing Sensitive Content from the Internet
This resource explains steps that survivors or victim service providers can take to have survivors’ personally identifying and/or intimate content from both host websites and search engine results in the course of privacy planning.
Safety and Privacy Tips for Older Technology
While less frequently seen in the field, some older technologies are still used against survivors. This new resource aims to preserve this useful information, while also removing it from more frequently used resources to improve length and readability of those other resources.
We are thrilled that H.R. 7132, the “Safe Connections Act of 2022,” was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this week. Introduced by U.S. Congresswomen Ann McLane Kuster (NH-2) and Anna Eshoo (CA-18), if enacted into law this bipartisan bill would give survivors of abuse the ability to remove themselves from family phone plans safely and easily without any termination fees. The Senate passed a similar version of the bill (S. 120) in March.
For many years, survivors have been locked-in to family phone plan contracts that impact their privacy and safety. Abusive partners misuse family phone plans as part of a harmful pattern of control. Many plans have features that give access to sensitive information such as a survivor’s location, call and text message history, or voicemails. These features can then be used by an abuser to monitor, stalk, threaten and harass a survivor. NNEDV urges Congress to reconcile the bills quickly pass the Safe Connections Act into law.
Learn more about Safe Connections Act of 2022 here and here.
December 2022 Update: The Safe Connections Act of 2022 has been signed into law! We are proud to have supported this legislation and look forward to the ways in which it will benefit survivors who need to leave shared phone plans as part of their journey toward safety and healing.
Managed by the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), this blog explores the intersection of technology and privacy and intimate partner violence, sexual assault and violence against women.
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