What is digital abuse?

 



Digital abuse (also called technology-facilitated violence against women and girls) covers a wide spectrum of violent behaviours. It can look like: 

  • Online harassment and cyberstalking: repeated, unwanted messages, cyber-flashing, creepshots, surveillance such as tracking your location, or monitoring your activity. 
  • Image-based and deepfake abuse: sharing private images without consent, or creating AI-generated sexual content through morphing, splicing, or superimposing photographs and videos to create deepfakes. These are sometimes called revenge porn. 
  • Violent pornography: images of sexual aggression and gendered violence in pornography widely available on the internet which is normalizing and perpetuating violence against women and girls. 
  • Trolling, threats, and blackmail: abusive comments designed to silence or intimidate, gender-based hate speech, threatening to share personal information, photos or videos of someone. 
  • Digital dating abuse: using apps or social media to control, pressure, or isolate a partner. 
  • Online grooming: using digital platforms to build trust or a relationship with someone – often a minor – with the intention of sexual exploitation and trafficking. 
  • Doxxing: publishing personal information online to endanger or intimidate. 
  • Identity theft: impersonation and the creation of fake profiles. 
  • Control of access: restricting or monitoring a woman’s access to shared devices, internet, or power sources.
Location: 405 E 45th St, New York, NY 10017, USA

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