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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Backlinks

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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

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.

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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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trusted-network

Trusted Network

A trusted network is the set of people a user pre-selects to receive alerts, check-ins and location from a safety app — Circle of 6’s and Círculo’s “circle” of six, On Watch’s “support network.” The design choices that matter are who can be added, how easily the list can be changed under duress, and whether contacts can actually help in time. It is the connective tissue that makes Bystander Intervention work in software.

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Part ofPersonal Safety Apps
EnablesBystander Intervention

circulo

Círculo (En Círculo)

Summary

Círculo is the privacy-hardened successor to Circle of 6, built for journalists, activists and human rights defenders — and grounded in the experience and concerns of the women who occupy central roles in journalism, social movements and human-rights defence. It keeps Circle of 6’s core idea — a self-chosen network of six trusted peers — but rebuilds it for high-risk work: members agree on safety protocols, form a social agreement about what they need from each other, then use the app to ask for help, share status, and send encrypted location updates that go only to their circle.

Its design centre is wellbeing and digital safety: encrypted conversations, no email or phone number required to sign up, lock and disguise features, no histories stored, and location that is encrypted and never tracked or exposed by the app. The makers are explicit that the app does not provide emergency response — it helps a person inform their community and signal what they need, and it requires an internet connection. By reducing isolation it aims to mitigate the burnout, trauma and self-censorship common in these fields.

Lineage

SucceedsCircle of 6
- Same six-peer “circle” model, re-engineered for journalists and human-rights defenders with strong privacy guarantees.

Safety features

ImplementsTrusted Network
- Six trusted peers with agreed protocols and a social agreement.
ImplementsPanic Button
- Send alerts “big and small” to the circle.
ImplementsLocation Sharing
- Encrypted, circle-only location; the app does not track or expose it.

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.

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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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

panic-button

Panic Button

A panic button (or SOS trigger) is the central primitive of most Personal Safety Apps: a single fast action — a screen tap, a hardware-button sequence, a voice command, or a wearable press — that raises an alarm and usually shares the user’s whereabouts with a Trusted Network or emergency dispatch. Design tensions include speed versus accidental triggering, and visibility versus the need for discreet activation under threat.

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Part ofPersonal Safety Apps
Paired withLocation Sharing