InterpersonalABUSE TACTIC

Digital Coercive Control

What it is

The use of digital technology by a current or former partner to monitor, isolate, threaten, humiliate, and control — location tracking, message surveillance, account takeover, spyware, image-based abuse, and constant contact — extending coercive control past the walls of the home and past the end of the relationship.

How it works

Coercive control has always depended on omnipresence: the abused person must feel watched even when alone (Stark, 2007). Technology makes omnipresence cheap. Woodlock's study of Australian practitioners and survivors found location tracking, incessant texting, and threats to share intimate images the most common patterns, and Freed and colleagues showed that most of it needs no special software — shared accounts and family plans, location sharing, children's devices, smart-home controls, and passwords learned during the relationship. Dedicated stalkerware exists and is marketed as child or employee monitoring. Isolation is enforced remotely: friends' messages are read and sometimes answered for. Surveillance is invisible, so the target cannot know what is safe to say or do. And the relationship never ends: post-separation abuse continues through contact, impersonation, account lockouts, and image threats. The specific danger is that the target's natural response — deleting apps, changing passwords, going dark — can alert the abuser and escalate violence, which is why technology safety planned with an advocate is the standard advice. The recognition signals are a partner who knows things you did not tell them, who insists on shared passwords or location “for safety,” and who reacts to unexplained gaps in contact.

Real-world examples

  • •Woodlock (2017) found that Australian domestic-violence practitioners reported location tracking through phones, incessant text messaging, and threats to distribute intimate images as routine features of the abuse they saw.
  • •Freed and colleagues (2018), working with survivors in New York, catalogued how abusers used ordinary account access, family phone plans, and shared devices rather than exotic spyware — which is why Cornell Tech later founded the Clinic to End Tech Abuse to work alongside advocates.
  • •Stalkerware marketed as parental or employee monitoring has been found on survivors' phones often enough that the Coalition Against Stalkerware, formed in 2019 by security companies and advocacy groups, exists to detect and remove it.
  • •Apple's Safety Check feature (iOS 16, 2022), which lets a user review and cut sharing with a former partner in one place, and the unknown-tracker alerts added by Apple and Google were built in response to documented abuse of location sharing and tracking tags.
  • •England and Wales made controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship a criminal offence in 2015 (Serious Crime Act, section 76), and prosecutions there have used digital surveillance of a partner as evidence of it.

Ethical guidelines

  • ●This technique is inherently unethical and psychologically harmful. Never use it in any context. If you recognize yourself doing this, seek professional help.
  • ●Location sharing, shared passwords, and device access are not intimacy. Love that requires surveillance is control wearing love's vocabulary.
  • ●Tracking a partner without consent is stalking, and in most jurisdictions distributing intimate images without consent is a crime; the technology does not change the act.
  • ●Companies that ship tracking and sharing features owe users the means to see and end sharing; the abuse cases were foreseeable.

How to defend against it

  • ►Do not go dark on your own. Deleting apps, resetting devices, or changing passwords can tell the abuser you know, and that moment can escalate danger. Talk to a domestic-violence advocate first (US: 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, thehotline.org; other countries: the NO MORE Global Directory, nomoredirectory.org); the NNEDV Safety Net project (techsafety.org) publishes technology-safety guidance written for exactly this situation.
  • ►Use a device the abuser has never touched — a friend's phone, a library computer, a prepaid phone kept where they cannot find it — for any conversation about leaving or safety.
  • ►When it is safe to do so, and with an advocate's help, audit sharing: Apple's Safety Check and Google's account and location settings show who can see your location, photos, and accounts; family plans and shared accounts should be separated by the carrier or provider, not just muted.
  • ►Document threats and contact — screenshots, dates, times — in an account the abuser does not know exists or with a trusted person, never on a shared device. If you are in immediate danger, your safety comes before documentation.
  • ►Threats to share intimate images are crimes in most jurisdictions. The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (cybercivilrights.org) maintains resources and a helpline, and StopNCII.org can help block images before they spread. Do not negotiate with the threat; report it.
  • ►Specialist services such as Cornell Tech's Clinic to End Tech Abuse work with survivors through advocates; ask your advocate whether something similar exists near you before trying to clean a device yourself.

From the Defense Playbook

Safety Planning Firsttakes practice

If you are afraid of a partner, ex-partner, or family member, plan for safety with a trained domestic-violence advocate before you confront, disclose, change your routines, or leave, because those are the moments when the risk of serious harm is highest.

Documentation, Kept Safelytakes practice

Keep a dated, factual record of incidents, messages, and transactions so that your memory and your account cannot be rewritten, and store it only where the other person cannot find or reach it, because your safety comes before any record.

Every playbook entry states how strong its evidence is and when not to use it. Browse the full playbook.

References

  1. Woodlock, D. (2017). The Abuse of Technology in Domestic Violence and Stalking. Violence Against Women, 23(5), 584-602
    Survey of practitioners and survivors identifying location tracking, incessant contact, and image threats as the dominant patterns.
  2. Freed, D., Palmer, J., Minchala, D., Levy, K., Ristenpart, T., & Dell, N. (2018). “A Stalker's Paradise”: How Intimate Partner Abusers Exploit Technology. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    Finding that most technology abuse uses ordinary account access and shared devices rather than specialist spyware.
  3. Stark, E. (2007). Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. Oxford University Press
    Surveillance and omnipresence as structural features of coercive control, which technology extends.
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