Safety & Privacy on Twitter: A Guide for Survivors of Harassment and Abuse

The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) and Twitter are excited to announce a new resource, Safety & Privacy on Twitter: A Guide for Victims of Harassment and Abuse. This guide provides specific tips and guidance for Twitter users on increasing their privacy and responding to other users who misuse the platform.

Both NNEDV and Twitter firmly believe that people should feel safe in all spaces, including online. Unfortunately, many people misuse online platforms, such as Twitter, as a tool to harass, abuse, and stalk. This occurs in domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking cases, as well as instances of mob harassment specifically targeting a person. NNEDV consistently advocates and works to help ensure that survivors can actively participate in online spaces without being victimized. As part of this work, NNEDV sits on Twitter’s Safety Council to share the experiences and challenges of survivors in this space and provide suggestions for addressing their needs.

This new guide walks through a number of safety tips to help users control their privacy and explains several features to ensure that users are making informed decisions on how they use Twitter. These include a detailed look at how you choose who can see your Tweets, how you manage your publicly available information, and how you control the sharing of your location. Many users are not familiar with some features that can be extremely helpful to victims of harassment, abuse, or stalking – such as the ability to remove location information from all past Tweets at once.

Understanding how to respond to harassment and abuse is just as important as controlling your own account and privacy. This guide also focuses on how Twitter defines harassment and what constitutes a violation of their Community Standards. The steps to block, mute, or report another user are explained, as well as additional considerations for survivors who many want to contact law enforcement or legal assistance.

Many victims of harassment and abuse are told to go offline or avoid certain spaces, although this is not a n acceptable solution. Getting off social media doesn’t guarantee any level of safety or privacy and it doesn’t hold those perpetrating abuse and harassment accountable. That is not the experience anyone should have online. Survivors should be able to use social media and online spaces while also maintaining control over their personal information and feeling safe. Being informed about how to best use the spaces they are in helps to accomplish this. Survivors should and must be safe at home, safe at the office, safe on the street, and safe online.

Check out the new guide here! 

New Resource: Tech Safety App

We’re thrilled to announce the release of our Tech Safety App! The Tech Safety App is an educational mobile app that helps users identify how abusers can harass them by misusing technology and learn what steps they can take to enhance their technology safety and privacy.

This app takes advantage of the NNEDV Safety Net project’s more than 15 years of working on the intersection of technology abuse and violence against women, and who have provided expert advice, trainings, and consultation on this issue to thousands of survivors of abuse, victim service providers, and technology companies. This app is another way to get information into the hands of survivors.

The Tech Safety App walks users through understanding how a particular technology could be misused, what they can do about it, and offers safety tips on how to increase their safety and privacy. The app also includes a wide range of resources, including those on this site, the WomensLaw.org legal hotline, and other hotlines.

The Tech Safety App will be launched at a reception on Monday, July 25, 2016 from 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm at the Hilton Financial District during NNEDV Safety Net’s 4th Annual Technology Summit. At this Summit, nearly 250 victim advocates, attorneys, law enforcement professionals, victim service providers from across the United States and around the world will attend to learn about how technology is misused to harass and how providers can address these crimes.

Download the app today, and let us know what you think!

Thinking Critically About Domestic Violence Offender Registries

Every year, somewhere in the country there is a proposal for a Domestic Violence Offender Registry. These proposals would create a publicly accessible database to list individuals who have been convicted of violent domestic violence crimes. The goal is for the registry to be a tool for prevention and accountability.

We don’t see that potential in a registry, however. What we do see are a list of unintended and harmful consequences for victims and their children. The following is a brief description of those concerns:

• False Sense of Security: In actual implementation of a registry, only a very small percentage of abusers would ever be listed, meaning that the database would significantly underrepresent the number of individuals who are abusive and could potentially pose a threat to others. Domestic violence is a seriously underreported crime and few abusers ever enter the criminal justice system in the first place. Of those who are arrested, many are not convicted. Of those convicted, many plea down or are initially only facing a charge that would not require their listing in the registry. This is because most proposals plan to only include offenders convicted of violent felonies; and many proposals suggest including those convicted of three or more felonies related to domestic violence.

• Privacy Concerns:  Due to the nature of intimate relationships in domestic violence cases, it is often impossible to publicly identify the offender without identifying the victim and their children. In a survey conducted by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 60% of victims reported that they had not contacted police due to concerns for their privacy. Unfortunately, being identified as a victim can come with some social stigmas and can impact employment or housing options.

• Barrier to Contacting 911: In addition to being concerned for their own privacy, many victims do not want a public wall of shame as an accountability option. They want the abuse to stop, but they may not want the abuser to be humiliated or for their family to feel exposed. They may also be concerned with an increase in safety risks if the abuser losing their job or is shamed due to the registry.

• Safety Concerns: The registry idea is premised on the assumption that if someone found their intimate partner or love interest in the database, they can end the relationship and prevent themselves from being a victim. However, the most dangerous time for women and their children is when they attempt to leave or have left an abusive partner. The risk of assault, stalking, and homicide all increase at this time and it’s critical that individuals have the support and resources they need to separate from a partner safely.

• Unnecessary Use of Funds:  Most states already make criminal records publicly available. Considering the limited scope of the proposals and who would be included, most of those records are already accessible.

• Inclusion of Victim’s Names: Unfortunately, victims are sometimes arrested after they call for help. This may be because they fought back in self-defense or because both parties were arrested.  Regardless, including victims’ names in a registry discourages them from calling for help, has many harmful consequences, and undermines the fundamental purpose of the database.

• Tool for Victim-Blaming: Domestic violence is an issue that is consistently minimized and misunderstood. Our societal responses continually look to victims to explain the behavior of the abuser, rather than truly trying to hold the offender accountable. Is it inevitable that with the existence of a registry, there will be questions posed to victims: Why didn’t you check the registry? Why didn’t you leave? Abusers tell convincing stories to rationalize, minimize, or excuse their prior behavior; and their charming personalities convince not just their intimate partners, but everyone around them. If we stop believing the myths that it’s extremely easy to accuse someone of a domestic violence crime they didn’t commit and that abusive behavior can be caused by alcoholism, we may start to believe victims and then look to the abuser for true accountability. Until we do that, a registry will only add to the current victim-blaming culture.

Arguments for a registry can be compelling and seemingly logical. They can also be deeply emotional when questioning whether its existence could have prevented a tragic homicide. Overall, the limitations of any registry to actually include every individual who has been violently abusive means there is a significant chance that it would not have been preventative and that it still will not be in the future. We do need preventative measures to address domestic violence, but they need to truly address the root causes of domestic violence, provide support to victims, and encourage people to contact help when they need it.