Reflections on 2022
/As we start the new year, we are reflecting back on 2022. It was another busy year where we worked to expand partnerships and explore new strategies to support victim service providers in addressing the impact of current and emerging technologies on victims’ safety, privacy, accessibility, and civil rights. Our commitment to this work and each other was demonstrated throughout the year as the team worked to keep growing the project.
In 2022, Safety Net provided 121 trainings, reaching over 17,000 advocates, victim service providers, legal professionals, technologists, educators, and others working with survivors of abuse. Presentations focused on an array of topics related to technology safety, including tech misuse, digital services, tech evidence, elder abuse and tech, stalkerware, teens and tech, tech design, confidentiality, data retention, financial abuse and tech, confidentiality obligations, safety planning, and privacy and security during relocation.
As services such as support groups began to return to in-person, many programs were evaluating what digital services they wanted to keep using to increase access for survivors. Safety Net responded to many requests throughout the year to assist service providers in considering communication platforms while prioritizing safety and confidentiality.
In March, we released version 2.0 of our Tech Safety App ( which provides survivors and advocates with information about tech abuse and options for taking action to address it. This update reflects newer technology and related forms of tech abuse, and strategies for increasing privacy and safety, and all content is available in both English and Spanish.
In June, Apple announced a new Safety Check feature. The Safety Net team (along with the National Center for Victims of Crime and our sister organization in Australia, WESNET) worked with Apple during the Safety Check development process and incorporated our input to create a tool that gives survivors control and choices in order to increase their privacy and safety.
In July, we held our tenth annual Technology Summit (sponsored by Uber, Google, Meta, Match Group, Apple, Airbnb, and Kaspersky). During eight powerful, virtual sessions over three days, we discussed innovative and practical ways to explore the intersection of technology and domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. With more than 400 attendees, we had meaningful conversations about how to use technology to support survivors and advocates and ways to hold abusers accountable.
In November, in partnership with our team, Ring announced a donation of up to 10,000 home security devices to support survivor safety. This project will enhance the field’s capacity to support survivors and provide more safety-planning options, and it will include sharing privacy and security best practices with organizations to ensure advocates can effectively counsel survivors about using the devices.
The team also developed several new resources throughout the year. A few of these include:
a series on Teens and Technology, including a video Tech Talk;
a handout explaining the intersection between Reproductive Coercion and Technology;
a guide on Data Brokers: What They Are and What You Can Do about Them;
a resource on Removing Sensitive Content from the Internet;
a series of updated and new content on Image-Based Abuse; and,
a refreshed handout to provide Safety and Privacy Tips for Older Technology.
To see all of these resources, please visit TechSafety.org.
This is a moment to step back, reflect, and take note of all that we accomplished. It’s also a moment to identify what we want to do differently in the year ahead of us to improve our work and what we bring to this space. We are proud of the work that we did and we will continue to grow this work and ourselves as we move into 2023. Thank you to everyone who has supported our team and the work of NNEDV over the last year.
