Anti-Violence Tech Vault

A curated, wikilink-connected research vault on anti-violence and women’s safety technology — the apps, devices, organisations and practice resources built to prevent, interrupt, document, and respond to gender-based violence, and the threats (stalkerware, coercive control, location tracking) they contend with.

Each note summarises a source in its own words and cross-links to related apps, concepts, and research with typed predicate::[[links]], forming a navigable graph of the field.

Start with concept-map for a guided tour, or browse the Map of Content below. See README for conventions, the predicate vocabulary, and the ar-crawl → zetl → hence toolchain.

Map of Content

Apps & products

Circle of 6
Círculo — privacy-hardened successor for journalists & human-rights defenders
On Watch
wanted: bSafe, Noonlight, Hollie Guard, Aspire News App, Garbo, …

Organisations & initiatives

Insight Exchange — Australian DFV initiative (DVSM)
Apps Against Abuse Challenge — US White House / HHS challenge, 2011

Practice resources & frameworks

My Safety Kit — reflection resource for victim-survivors
Responders Lab — peer learning for responders
No Hidden Door — communication-ecosystem audit + guidance

Concept hubs

Personal Safety Apps
Reporting Apps
Bystander Intervention
Panic Button
Location Sharing
Trusted Network
Trauma-Informed Design
Victim-Survivor
wanted: Discreet Access, Survivor-Centered Design, Privacy and Safety, Risk Assessment, Crisis Hotlines and Resources, Safety Wearables, AI Distress Detection

The violence being addressed

Gender-Based Violence
Domestic Family and Sexualised Violence
Coercive Control
wanted: Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Violence, Economic Abuse, Stalking

The technology being weaponised (threats)

Stalkerware
wanted: Tech-Enabled Abuse, Location Tracking Abuse

Research & reports

The Safest Woman Alive — Öhlund & Strohmayer (2025, CHI EA): critique of interpersonal safety tech
Datafication of MeToo — Henne, Shelby & Harb (2021): racial capitalism & reporting apps
wanted: Tech Abuse and Coercive Control, safety-app efficacy studies, NNEDV/WESNET Safety Net reports, …

Critical lenses

Four Domains of Power
Techno-Solutionism
wanted: Feminist HCI, Racial Capitalism, Datafication, Victim-Blaming

How to contribute

The vault is a plain-text zetl wikilink graph — every note is Markdown with typed [[wikilinks]].

Gather sources with ar-crawl (output to scratch/).
Add or edit notes following the structure of existing ones (see README).
Run zetl check to validate links and zetl build to preview locally.
Track the work as a hence plan so agents don’t collide.

Backlinks

concept-map
README ×2

Linked Pages

README

Anti-Violence Tech — Research Wiki

A zetl vault that collects research into anti-violence and women’s safety technology and structures it into a navigable wiki — so that every participant in the project shares a common understanding rather than a pile of disconnected docs and bookmarks.

Scope: personal-safety apps, domestic- and intimate-partner-violence support tools, bystander-intervention platforms, evidence-documentation tools, safety wearables — and the threats they respond to (stalkerware, coercive control, location tracking).

Each note is a plain Markdown file connected to others by [[wikilinks]], forming a queryable knowledge graph. Start with concept-map for the guided tour, or browse index (the Map of Content).

Toolchain directive

This project is built with three CLI tools. Use them — they each own one stage of the loop; don’t reinvent their jobs.

Tool	Role	Job in this project
`ar-crawl`	Agent-first web crawler (clean JSON/CSV/SQLite)	Gather. Crawl app-store listings, vendor sites, NGO/government reports, news, and academic sources into structured data for an agent to read.
`zetl`	Bidirectional `[[wikilink]]` graph CLI	Structure. Turn findings into wikilinked Markdown notes. This vault is a zetl graph. Query, validate, and build the site with zetl.
`hence`	Multi-agent plan coordination via defeasible logic	Coordinate. Plan and track research/curation work across agents; record decisions and let stronger evidence defeat weaker conclusions.

The loop

   ┌──────────┐   raw structured data   ┌─────────────────────┐   notes    ┌──────────┐
   │ ar-crawl │ ─────────────────────▶  │ agent reads + writes │ ────────▶  │   zetl   │
   └──────────┘                         └─────────────────────┘            └──────────┘
        ▲                                                                        │
        │                          hence plan tracks the work                   │ check / build
        └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────◀─┘

Gather — ar-crawl. Point the crawler at a source (an app’s store page, a vendor site, a tech-abuse report) and capture clean structured output:
```
ar-crawl <url> --format json -o scratch/<source>.json
```
The crawler does retrieval only — AI is in your agent, not in the tool. An agent reads the JSON and writes the note.
Structure — zetl. Write or update a Markdown note under apps/, concepts/, or research/, cross-linking with [[wikilinks]]. Then validate and preview:

techno-solutionism

Techno-Solutionism

Techno-solutionism is the assumption that complex social and political problems can be fixed with technology. In anti-violence tech it shows up as the belief that the right gadget or app can “prevent sexual assault” or “ensure the safety of women” — a framing critiqued at length in The Safest Woman Alive and Datafication of MeToo. The danger is twofold: it shifts the burden of prevention onto victim-survivors (who must buy, learn, and correctly use devices), and it draws attention and funding away from structural change addressed by the other Four Domains of Power.

This is the central tension running through the vault: tools can genuinely help in a crisis, but should be weighed against Trauma-Informed Design, feminist critique, and the limits of what design alone can do.

In this vault

Critiqued byFour Domains of Power
Tension withPersonal Safety Apps

four-domains-of-power

Four Domains of Power

The four domains of power come from Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought, describing how oppression is organised and managed at four social levels:

Structural — large institutions and economic imbalance (laws, education, funding for shelters and women’s health).
Disciplinary — organisational practice and bureaucracy (e.g. a justice system where only ~1.3% of UK rape cases charged; “hierarchies of victimhood”).
Hegemonic — norms, culture and ideology that legitimise patriarchal oppression (shaming, “honour,” victim-blaming).
Interpersonal — direct, visible, day-to-day harm, including both stranger harassment and Intimate Partner Violence.

The Safest Woman Alive adapts the framework to show that most Personal Safety Apps and safety wearables address only the interpersonal domain, leaving the structural, disciplinary and hegemonic drivers of Gender-Based Violence untouched — and argues HCI should design across all four.

In this vault

AnalysesGender-Based Violence
CountersTechno-Solutionism

datafication-of-metoo

The Datafication of #MeToo

Reference: Kathryn Henne, Renee Shelby & Jenna Harb (2021). “The Datafication of #MeToo: Whiteness, Racial Capitalism, and Anti-Violence Technologies.” Big Data & Society, 8(2). DOI 10.1177/20539517211055898.

Summary

A critical study of Reporting Apps — software platforms and AI chatbots that offer users emergency assistance, education, and a way to report and build evidence against perpetrators of Gender-Based Violence. Through an in-depth analysis of two reporting apps, Henne, Shelby and Harb argue that these tools construct data to fit institutionally legible narratives of violence, and in doing so reproduce racial capitalism: they extract information from users, reinforce property relations built on data ownership and accumulation, commodify “diversity and inclusion,” and often sustain problematic ties to the criminal legal system.

Its value to this vault is as a counterweight to celebratory framings of safety tech. It foregrounds the racialised dimensions of the data capital these apps generate, and warns that the design choice to “build evidence” is never neutral — it shapes whose stories become legible and who benefits from the resulting data. The authors note these dynamics are not unique to anti-violence apps but are constitutive of digital platforms generally.

Key ideas

Anti-violence reporting apps are datafication engines as much as support tools — the data they generate is itself capital.
“Institutionally legible” evidence privileges some narratives (and some survivors) over others.
Entanglement with the Criminal Legal System is a design feature, not an accident, and carries racialised risks.
Extraction, financial partnerships, and commodified inclusion recur across platforms, not just safety apps.

Connections

StudiesReporting Apps
StudiesEvidence Documentation
CritiquesPrivacy and Safety
- Reframes “data collection” as extraction and accumulation.
ExaminesRacial Capitalism
AddressesGender-Based Violence
Related toCriminal Legal System

Sources

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517211055898

the-safest-woman-alive

“The Safest Woman Alive”

Reference: Linnea Öhlund & Angelika Strohmayer (2025). “‘The Safest Woman Alive’: A Reflection on Interpersonal Safety Technologies for Gendered Violence Protection.” CHI EA ’25: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Article 651, pp. 1–11. DOI 10.1145/3706599.3716240. (alt.chi)

Summary

A critical, feminist reflection on how HCI designs against gendered violence (GV). The paper opens with a satirical prologue — a woman dressing for a walk who straps on a body sensor, a “smart girl security system” belt, smart-foot devices, multiple panic wristbands, a tazer-watch, a filming ring, pepper-spray GPS sticks, and a dozen “safe route” / panic-button / evidence-recording apps — each one drawn from a real published HCI safety project. The absurd accumulation makes the argument: HCI over-engages with interpersonal safety technologies, loading the burden of protection onto potential victim-survivors and treating a socio-political problem as a personal, gadget-shaped one.

To reframe the field, the authors apply Patricia Hill Collins’ Four Domains of Power (structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, interpersonal) and show that almost every device in their prologue addresses only the interpersonal domain — and mostly the hyper-visible case of stranger street harassment — when the most common GV is intimate-partner and hidden. They warn that such designs are techno-solutionist and can be victim-blaming, demand normative bodies and “correct” use, and rest on unreliable tech (facial/emotion recognition). They call for HCI to design across all four domains — including for perpetrators and structural change — in allyship with support services, and offer a reflective framework spanning a trajectory “from gadgets to critique.”

Key ideas

The burden of GV prevention is wrongly placed on women and gender-nonconforming people, not the institutions and perpetrators upholding violence.
The Four Domains of Power is a usable reflective tool: map which level your intervention actually addresses.
Most safety tech targets the visible interpersonal domain (stranger danger), missing the structural, disciplinary, and hegemonic domains.
“Safe route” routing encodes whose safety counts (ACLU backlash to Microsoft’s version); emotion/face recognition is unreliable and non-inclusive.
Reporting/mapping platforms (Harassmap, Hollaback / Right To Be, Protibadi) gain power from activist use, not data collection alone.
Uses “gendered violence” rather than “violence against women and girls” to include queer and gender-nonconforming people.

Connections

CritiquesPersonal Safety Apps
CritiquesTechno-Solutionism
IntroducesFour Domains of Power
AddressesGender-Based Violence
DiscussesReporting Apps
Informed byFeminist HCI
Related toTrauma-Informed Design
Related toDatafication of MeToo
- Companion critique: both read anti-violence tech through power and political economy.

Sources

https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3706599.3716240

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.

In this vault

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.

In this vault

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

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.

In this vault

Subtype ofGender-Based Violence
CentresVictim-Survivor

gender-based-violence

Gender-Based Violence

Gender-based violence (GBV) is violence directed at a person because of their gender, or that affects one gender disproportionately. It is the umbrella over Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Violence, Stalking and Coercive Control — the harms the tools and resources in this vault aim to prevent, interrupt, document or respond to.

In this vault

IncludesIntimate Partner Violence
IncludesSexual Violence
IncludesCoercive Control
IncludesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence

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.

In this vault

Related toTrauma-Informed Design
Subjected toGender-Based Violence

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.

In this vault

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.

In this vault

Part ofPersonal Safety Apps
EnablesBystander Intervention

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.

In this vault

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.

In this vault

Part ofPersonal Safety Apps
Paired withLocation Sharing

bystander-intervention

Bystander Intervention

Bystander intervention is a violence-prevention approach that equips the people around a potential victim — friends, peers, colleagues, communities — to notice, interrupt and prevent harm before it occurs, rather than placing the whole burden on the person at risk. In safety tech it shows up as tools that lower the friction of reaching trusted people: Circle of 6, Círculo, On Watch, and the federal Apps Against Abuse Challenge that promoted them were all explicitly bystander- and prevention-oriented.

Insight Exchange’s Responders Lab extends the idea beyond the crisis moment, framing everyone as an ongoing “responder” whose interactions matter.

In this vault

PreventsGender-Based Violence
Related toTrusted Network

reporting-apps

Reporting Apps

Reporting apps are anti-violence tools whose primary purpose is not to summon help in the moment but to document and report incidents of Gender-Based Violence — building a record or evidence trail against a perpetrator, sometimes with AI chatbots for triage and education. They sit closer to the justice system than Personal Safety Apps, which makes their handling of data especially consequential: see Datafication of MeToo for a critique of how the data they generate becomes capital and entangles users with the Criminal Legal System.

In this vault

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.

In this vault

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

no-hidden-door

No Hidden Door

Insight Exchange (DVSM) · Website audit + reports + guidance + art collection · 2021–2022

Summary

No Hidden Door reframes every sector as a possible “door” to information and support for victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexualised violence — and argues that because safety and communication are inextricably linked, the quality and safety of public-facing communication (especially websites) is itself a safety matter. Many victim-survivors only ever browse a website and never make contact, so unclear, opaque or unsafe digital “doors” can extend an abuser’s control and leave people unable to navigate support.

Between October and December 2021, Insight Exchange audited 200+ websites across five industries (including NSW Health, Employee Assistance Programs, support services, and police) as sample doors in the information ecosystem, publishing an executive summary and per-sector reports. The work includes practical guidance for industry staff who design website content and functions relating to violence and abuse — focused on content and function rather than aesthetics — and a commissioned art collection by Louise Whelan dramatising how the burden of effort to find, ask for and access help currently falls on the victim-survivor.

Connections

Produced byInsight Exchange
PromotesDiscreet Access
- Calls for “discreet, dignified and supportive” digital doors.
AddressesTech-Enabled Abuse
- Opaque communication lets people using abuse extend control.
CentresVictim-Survivor
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/no-hidden-door/

Tags: #resource #report #communication-design

responders-lab

Responders Lab

Insight Exchange (DVSM) · Free facilitated virtual session (~2 hrs) · Groups of 10–30

Summary

The Responders Lab is a free, facilitated, peer-learning experience from Insight Exchange designed to deepen how everyday people understand and respond to domestic, family and sexualised violence. Its premise is that every response matters — that each of us is a friend, colleague, neighbour or family member who may be confided in, and that responses are ongoing rather than a single reaction to a disclosure.

Four content modules — “Our Interactions,” “Our Responses,” “My Ecosystem Matters,” and “Follow My Meaning” — emphasise dignity, not operating from assumptions, and keeping the victim-survivor at the centre of their own ecosystem. Sessions run as two-hour virtual workshops for groups, with content developed from local and international lived and learned expertise and offered in English, Spanish and Arabic.

Connections

Produced byInsight Exchange
TeachesBystander Intervention
- Frames everyone as an ongoing “responder,” broader than crisis-moment bystanding.
Informed byTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/responders-lab/

Tags: #resource #training #responders

my-safety-kit

My Safety Kit

Insight Exchange (DVSM) · Reflection resource (booklet + animations + decision-making tool) · Free

Summary

My Safety Kit is a reflection resource from Insight Exchange for people who are, or may be, experiencing domestic, family and sexualised violence. Rather than triggering an alarm, it supports a person “at their pace, at their lead” with information and reflection questions about how they see their situation and what they might be weighing as they look ahead. It includes a decision-making tool and reflection questions across areas of wellbeing — material basics / economic wellbeing, love and connection, participation, learning, physical and mental health, and safety — and is available as a booklet (including a My Safety Kit Aotearoa edition) with short introductory animations.

It is accompanied by de-identified lived-experience insights (e.g. “Sam” and “Alex”) that map real experiences against the kit’s focus areas, illustrating what a person may be doing — or not doing — to stay safe and well within their relationship.

Connections

Produced byInsight Exchange
Informed byTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
SupportsRisk Assessment
- Self-directed reflection rather than an actuarial checklist.
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence
AddressesEconomic Abuse

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/my-safety-kit/

Tags: #resource #reflection #lived-experience

apps-against-abuse-challenge

Apps Against Abuse Challenge

Convened by the US White House (OSTP), HHS, and the Office of the Vice President · 2011

Summary

“Apps Against Abuse” was a US federal technology challenge launched in July 2011 by Vice President Joe Biden, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, as part of the 1 is 2 Many initiative against dating violence and sexual assault. It called on software developers to use mobile technology to keep young adults connected to trusted friends in real time and to provide fast access to help (local police, abuse hotlines).

The framing was explicitly bystander- and prevention-oriented: because many incidents of dating violence and sexual assault involve an acquaintance isolating a target, the envisioned app would let someone reach trusted friends before harm occurs. In November 2011 two co-winners were announced — Circle of 6 and On Watch — and the Vice President urged college and university leaders to make students aware of them.

Connections

Winning apps assert won::[[Apps Against Abuse Challenge]]; see this page’s backlinks for the full list.

Sources

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/1is2many/apps-against-abuse

Tags: #initiative #policy #government

insight-exchange

Insight Exchange

Domestic Violence Service Management (DVSM) · Australia · Registered charity (ABN 26 165 400 635)

Summary

Insight Exchange is an Australian initiative established, developed and governed by Domestic Violence Service Management (DVSM). Rather than an app, it is a body of lived-experience-led resources that centre the dignity and agency of people subjected to domestic, family and sexualised violence — and that support the people and institutions around them to respond well. Its material is organised around Listening, Exploring, Responding, Learning and Participating, and is published in multiple languages (including Spanish and Arabic).

Its design philosophy is a useful counterpoint to the “panic button” model of safety tech: instead of a device that summons help in a crisis, Insight Exchange produces reflective resources (e.g. My Safety Kit), practice programs for responders (e.g. Responders Lab), and communication-ecosystem audits (e.g. No Hidden Door) grounded in what victim-survivors say keeps them safe and well.

Connections

Informed byTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence
ProducesMy Safety Kit
ProducesResponders Lab
ProducesNo Hidden Door

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/

Tags: #org #australia #lived-experience

on-watch

On Watch

On Watch · iPhone · Free · circa 2011–2012

Summary

On Watch is an iPhone personal-safety app built for college students. It lets a user transmit critical information — by phone, email, text, and social media — to a chosen support network. Two touches can call 911 or campus police; “check-in” messages keep friends informed; and countdown timers automatically send a message with GPS coordinates if an activity does not go according to plan (for example, a walk home that runs long). It also connects users directly to sexual-assault, dating-violence, and domestic-abuse hotlines.

It was named alongside Circle of 6 as a co-winner of the federal Apps Against Abuse Challenge, whose brief was to keep young adults connected to trusted friends in real time and to provide fast access to help.

Recognition

WonApps Against Abuse Challenge
- Co-winner with Circle of 6, announced November 2011.

Safety features

ImplementsPanic Button
- Two-touch call to 911 or campus police.
ImplementsLocation Sharing
- GPS sent automatically on a missed check-in / countdown.
ImplementsTrusted Network
ImplementsCrisis Hotlines and Resources

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.

circle-of-6

Circle of 6

Tech 4 Good (Nancy Schwartzman, Christine Corbett Moran, Thomas Cabus) · iOS (Feb 2012) / Android (Sept 2012) · Free · Active (founding lead developer departed 2015)

Summary

Circle of 6 is a bystander-style personal-safety app for preventing dating violence and sexual assault, built on the premise that the fastest help is often a trusted friend. A user picks six people for their “circle”; from then on, two taps sends those contacts a pre-set message together with the user’s GPS location — for example “come and get me,” “call and interrupt me,” or a request for advice. The app also links directly to reputable domestic-violence and national hotlines, and originally invited contacts to take a Facebook pledge to help stop violence before it happens.

It was co-created by filmmaker and activist Nancy Schwartzman with developer Christine Corbett Moran (lead developer / CTO until 2015) and Thomas Cabus, under the umbrella “Tech 4 Good.” A university edition, Circle of 6 U, customised the trusted-resource links per campus; the team ran a two-year pilot with colleges including Williams. The app reported over 15,000 downloads within its first months and wide press coverage.

Recognition

WonApps Against Abuse Challenge
- Co-winner with On Watch of the White House / HHS challenge, announced November 2011.

Safety features

ImplementsTrusted Network
- Exactly six pre-chosen contacts — small, intimate, low-friction.
ImplementsPanic Button
- Two taps to send a pre-set message.
ImplementsLocation Sharing
- GPS location attached to the alert.

concept-map

Concept Map — A Tour of Anti-Violence Tech

This is the prose tour of the vault: the ideas and how they interlock. For the index of every note, see index.

The problem shapes the tools

Anti-violence technology only makes sense against the violence it answers. Gender-Based Violence is the umbrella; within it sit Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner Violence, whose defining dynamic is often Coercive Control — a pattern of domination that runs through finances, isolation, and surveillance, not just physical assault. Stalking extends the same control beyond the relationship. Naming these accurately matters, because a tool designed for stranger danger (a Panic Button for a dark parking lot) addresses a very different threat model from one designed for a survivor living with their abuser.

Three families of tools

Most products cluster into a few patterns:

Alarm-and-summon. Personal Safety Apps like bSafe and Noonlight center a Panic Button that alerts a Trusted Network or dispatch, usually with Location Sharing. The core question is who is notified, and can they actually help in time?
Network-and-intervene. Bystander Intervention tools like Circle of 6 lower the friction of reaching friends before a situation escalates — prevention over reaction.
Document-and-disclose. Evidence Documentation tools help survivors capture incidents for protective orders or prosecution, feeding into Reporting and Disclosure and Crisis Hotlines and Resources.

Increasingly, Safety Wearables and AI Distress Detection add hardware triggers and automatic detection on top of these patterns.

The double edge

The same capabilities that protect can be turned into weapons. Location Sharing inverts into Location Tracking Abuse; consumer monitoring apps become Stalkerware; the broader pattern is Tech-Enabled Abuse. This is why Privacy and Safety is not a feature checkbox but the central design tension: a safety app that leaks data, or that an abuser can see on a shared device, can increase danger.

Designing for survivors

The strongest tools are built with Trauma-Informed Design and Survivor-Centered Design: discreet apps that disguise themselves on a monitored phone, defaults that fail safe, and Risk Assessment grounded in what actually predicts escalation. The measure of an anti-violence tool is not its feature list but whether it reduces real harm for the people most at risk — a claim that should be checked against Research, such as Tech Abuse and Coercive Control.