24. Social Location Tracking Double opt-in: Choose to see a friend’s location without agreeing to share your location. Notification: Text messages or “notification” sent to notify you of your “friends’” locations Turn location sharing on & off/set to false location: can set as invisible to all or to just one person. Perpetrator could set location at grocery store & go to victim’s home or monitor victim’s “check-ins.”
48. Advocacy, Technology, and Safety Online Course: Part 4 of 4 Using and Stalking Log How Survivors Can Benefit from Technology
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61. The Safety Net Technology Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence 2001 S Street, NW Suite 400 Washington, DC 20009 Phone: 202-543-5566 Website: www.nnedv.org Email: SafetyNet@nnedv.org This contact information is intended for advocates and allies. The project does not have staffing and coverage to take calls directly from victims/survivors. Advocates are encouraged to contact the Safety Net Tech Team for assistance by phone or email about individual victims (identifying details about the victim are not needed).
Editor's Notes
Curriculum revised: Summer 2010 Using this curriculum: Adapt the patter to your style and add stories from your experience or community. We have included talking points and some stories in the notes section throughout the power point. These notes are just here to give you some ideas - they are not meant to be covered in full. Skim the notes when you feel like you need some backup, but when you have your own stories, please use them (and share them with all of us through the Tech Advocate Listserv). The most boring trainings are those where the trainer reads a script. Use your own style and personality to make this rather overwhelming information more accessible and interesting. Presentation Titles: We often change our presentation title depending on the audience. When choosing titles and writing descriptions, we suggest staying away from using the phrase “cyberstalking” because this training covers so much more than just computers and Internet, which is what the term cyber usually conveys. Below are some examples that you could use: Technology & Internet Safety: Issues for Victims & Advocates Maintaining Safety in a Digital Age From Phones to Facebook: Technology and Survivors Technology, Stalking, & Victim Safety
Please give credit to NNEDV and the Safety Net Project when you use this curriculum. If you use slides or material created by other tech advocates, please be sure to also give them credit. The Safety Net Technology Project at NNEDV addresses how technology impacts the safety, privacy and accessibility rights of victims. Safety Net educates victims, their advocates and the general public on ways to use technology strategically to help find safety and escape domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, stalking and abuse. Safety Net trains law enforcement, social services, coordinated community response teams and others how to hold perpetrators accountable for misusing technology to impersonate, harass, stalk, monitor, and threaten. Since 2002, the Safety Net Project has trained more than 43,000 advocates, police, prosecutors and others.
Talking Points: Regardless of how intertwined our lives our with technology, we often get questions about the intersection of technology and survivors. These are topics that will be covered throughout the training. Delivery Tips: Here’s two ways you can present this slide: You can discuss each of these points with the participants and ask them for their feedback and experiences in their community that make technology important to their work. You can use Custom Animation (right click on box around text), to display the question first and then display the points/answers second. This allows you to engage the audience and have them give you their reasons why technology is important before you provide these points.
Talking Points: We often hear questions and statements regarding technology’s role in creating abuse, especially within media. It’s important to make the point clear that abusers are just using new tools, but the behavior is the same. Additionally, many people hear some misuses of tech and are then fearful of technology, so it’s important to note that technology is not at fault and can even be helpful. If you take away the technology, you’re still going to have an abusive person. It’s important not to just focus on the technology and the misuse of it – but what other tactics is the abuser using and what things can the survivor do to be safe.
NNEDV Safety Net Project. SafetyNet@nnedv.org Transition slide – beginning section focusing on types of phone technology
Talking Points: With Caller ID, survivors can know who is calling them and choose not to answer the phone. If they don’t recognize the number on the caller ID, they can use reverse directory lookups on the internet to see who the phone number belongs to. Abusers can misuse this though to locate a survivor who has fled or relocated. Image: This reverse directory lookup shows the National Network to End Domestic Violence and has a (mostly) accurate map of their organization’s old offices in Washington, DC. Interestingly, NNEDV moved their offices in summer 2007, but kept their phone numbers. Reverse lookup directories still show their former location (as of July 2010). Story to Share: “San Antonio – A 23-year old man has been charged with murdering a former girlfriend after using a Caller ID service to track her down” (Associated Press, 1995). Soon after Caller ID was rolled out, a woman in Texas fled but had to call her ex-boyfriend. He had subscribed to Caller ID, saw the phone number, and knew where she was located. He tracked her down and killed her. NOTE: If you want to adapt this slide, you could do a reverse lookup of your own organization and add it to the slide. (To take a “screen shot” from a PC computer (not a Mac), press Alt and “Prnt Scrn” to “copy” the image in the active window. Then open PowerPoint and Paste into a slide.) Story to Share in ADVOCATE ONLY audiences: A rape crisis center had a repeat harassing caller and was able to use his number from the 800 billing records (while blocking out other numbers in records) to prosecute the caller. (This story should not be used in a more general audience since we don’t want others to ask local SV and DV programs for their phone records that have survivor call info on them.)
Safety Planning Talking Points: Pay-as-you-go phones can give survivors a line that is not location specific and tied to their personal information. These phones should be purchased with cash though, as paying with a credit or debit card will link their personal information to the phone. Survivors can call their phone companies to discuss what optional phone services are available that might be helpful. Program Best Practices Talking Points: Advocates should always make sure to ask survivors if it would be a safety risk if the program number or name was to show up on their caller ID. (Could the abuser be monitoring phone records or the Caller ID itself?) Some people don’t allow blocked numbers to call their phone – and advocates would then get a message saying “press 1 (or something) to unblock your number and continue this call”. The advocate has already said they would call back and the survivor is waiting, so they unblock the number. This could be a safety risk if doing so alerts the abuser that the survivor is calling and talking to a program.
Risks Talking Points: As discussed before, physical location is linked to phone numbers. Documents faxed from a local program in a survivor’s new town were to her attorney, then faxed by her attorney to abuser’s attorney – and unintentionally provided the abuser with information on where the survivor was receiving services or living. Most machines have large hard drives that store copies of faxes sent. It’s critical to have policies around protecting the information stored on the hard drives. Best Practices Talking Points: Clearing memory may or may not clear information on the hard drive – know this and plan accordingly. Programs should call ahead before faxing survivor information to ensure person receiving information is waiting for it. Cover sheets can designated who the fax is for and announce that the information contained is confidential – and request that attorneys or others cut off the fax header with the identifying information about the victim’s locations
Talking Points: Phones that were gifts from the abuser or family plans where the abuser has access to the account are red flags that the abuser may be misusing the phone or account in someway. Survivors may consider getting a new phone or getting a separate phone that the abuser doesn’t know about to make private calls to advocates, attorneys, police, family, etc. NOTE – Ask advocates NOT to forbid cell phones in programs, shelter, etc. Having phones are too important to victims. This is not the solution to the issue – there are so many ways that the abuser can locate the victim or shelter – it’s important that we continue to safety plan around all of them and not put limitations on the survivor.
Talking Points: Some survivors have received text messages that have no return phone number or sender name. Other times, survivors have received texts that look like they came from a close friend or their doctor’s office. Abusers have even manipulated the sender information to make it look like the survivor is sending harassing or threatening messages – or messages contradicting claims of abuse or fear. The simplest way to falsify a text message is send one through the cell phone carrier’s website, choosing what number shows up on the victim’s phone. There are also websites that offer to falsify the caller ID when sending texts so that you can send “jokes” and prank people. Cell phone carriers typically don’t keep the content of text messages on their servers for too long. They might delete this within 24 or 48 hours. Because of this, it’s critical that law enforcement quickly send a preservation letter to the company requesting that they do not delete any information from the servers regarding the account(s) they are investigating.
Sample Delivery: Text messages are not sent directly. Like email, text messaging is a store-and-forward technology. One person types a message and sends it to the service provider (Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon, etc.). The provider then sends that message to the intended recipient. And in most circumstances, there's some record of the information contained in these messages left on the server. However, because so many text messages are exchanged every day, the amount of time a particular message remains on the server really varies, but it’s never very long.
NNEDV Safety Net Project. SafetyNet@nnedv.org Info on Bluetooth: Bluetooth transmits information between devices within a range of 30 feet. By using short-range radio frequencies, Bluetooth technology provides a universal bridge that integrates existing devices so they can communicate with mobile devices such as your laptop, cell phone, PDA, mp3 player, and more. This wireless technology uses a globally available frequency band (2.4GHZ) for worldwide compatibility so you can go anywhere without having to worry about toting the right cable around with you.
Curriculum revised: Summer 2010 Using this curriculum: Adapt the patter to your style and add stories from your experience or community. We have included talking points and some stories in the notes section throughout the power point. These notes are just here to give you some ideas - they are not meant to be covered in full. Skim the notes when you feel like you need some backup, but when you have your own stories, please use them (and share them with all of us through the Tech Advocate Listserv). The most boring trainings are those where the trainer reads a script. Use your own style and personality to make this rather overwhelming information more accessible and interesting. Presentation Titles: We often change our presentation title depending on the audience. When choosing titles and writing descriptions, we suggest staying away from using the phrase “cyberstalking” because this training covers so much more than just computers and Internet, which is what the term cyber usually conveys. Below are some examples that you could use: Technology & Internet Safety: Issues for Victims & Advocates Maintaining Safety in a Digital Age From Phones to Facebook: Technology and Survivors Technology, Stalking, & Victim Safety
Transition Slide – switching to location-based technologies
Talking Points: GPS is a very reliable technology using Department of Defense satellites that orbit the planet. 2 types: Active and Passive – Passive GPS devices (Microsoft image) can be placed inside a vehicle to log where the vehicle travels. The log can then be accessed later by connecting the device to a computer. Passive does not allow an abuser to monitor a victim’s location in real-time. Active GPS devices monitor location in real-time with companion software or applications on phones.
Talking Points: Both cell phone companies (Sprint) and third party services (Loopt, Google Latitude) offer applications and services that utilize the GPS in cell phones to share or monitor cell phone users’ location. These services bring “social mapping” to another level by displaying your location via the GPS chip and broadcasting it to your friends so you can connect. Several services require both users to approve sharing their location so no one can see your location at random, although abusers have set up applications on victims’ phones that they have access to without the victim knowing. Additionally, family plans through carriers can allow an abuser the ability to activate the GPS and use features like the Sprint Family Locator with or without the knowledge of other family members. Most of the more respected companies make all location sharing both optional and fully transparent. NNEDV tested Google Latitude and Loopt prior to launch to help them add features that would minimize risk of abusers tracking victim location without notice and recourse. There use to be websites that offered to locate someone using the GPS for a fee, but most of these have disappeared due to the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006. Delivery Tips: Sprint and Verizon both have demo movies on their website. If you have Internet access in the training room, you can play one. http://shop.sprint.com/en/services/gps/family_locator_demo.shtml http://products.verizonwireless.com/index.aspx?id=fnd_familylocator In the News: GPSonCellPhones_2006 Story about GPS technology on cell phones. New software developed to use GPS in cell phones to track people. Fletcher and Uechi created Mologogo, an application which uses GPS to show users where their friends are -- in real time. When Fletcher pulls out his phone and selects Mologogo, it displays a map of the streets around him while a dot shows his location. It also shows where Fletcher's friends are, if they have Mologogo running on their cell phones. The phones all transmit their locations to a Web site, so Fletcher also can log in from any computer and find his friends online.
NNEDV Safety Net Project. SafetyNet@nnedv.org Point of Slide: Social networking is not limited to computer access. Many web-based social networking sites have gone mobile including Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Sharing a user’s location has becoming a standard feature for social networking. Sample Delivery: “ Third party Services such as Foursquare, Loopt, and Gowalla make social networking and potential stalking more convenient. These services bring “social mapping” to another level by displaying your location via the GPS chip and broadcasting it to your friends so you can connect. These sites are highly popular with the teens and twenty-something crowd. Foursquare and Loopt can pinpoint other users in your address book or Facebook friend list, display their location on a map, and automatically notify you when they’re within 1.5 or 25 miles of your location. However, they must be part of your designed network. You can’t locate users by random unless the other user’s profile is set to private. You can access these via a cell phone or website and not only send text messages but pictures. It will date stamp the location, day, and time it posts to the webpage. When your friends view the webpage via computer or phone with Internet access, Google Latitude displays your location on a Google map. Google Latitude automatically updates a user’s location. Apps such as Foursquare and Loopt require the user to ‘check-in.’ Many of these apps allow a user to check-in to a false location.” Story to Share: GPSonCellPhones_2006. Story about GPS technology on cell phones. New software developed to use GPS in cell phones to track people. Fletcher and Uechi created Mologogo, an application which uses GPS to show users where their friends are -- in real time. When Fletcher pulls out his phone and selects Mologogo, it displays a map of the streets around him while a dot shows his location. It also shows where Fletcher's friends are, if they have Mologogo running on their cell phones. The phones all transmit their locations to a Web site, so Fletcher also can log in from any computer and find his friends online.
Talking Points: Abusers can monitor a victim’s location either through their phone or by placing a GPS device in the vehicle or another object. Victim’s may not know how the abuser is monitoring their location, they might just know that the abuser knows way too much about everywhere they go. Advocates can provide information on devices and services and help to narrow down what the abuser might be doing.
NNEDV Safety Net Project. SafetyNet@nnedv.org Talking Points: The latest marketing techniques around GPS allegedly focus on monitoring teen driving (except the features don’t seem to match the child safety message) There are various types of GPS systems that can be installed into vehicles. Some are passive, where a memory card can later retrieve and download the information to your computer just like a digital camera. Others are active, allowing monitoring in real time. Many systems offer additional features, including real-time alerts via phone, text message, or email when the car goes above a certain speed of when it goes beyond a certain area. The Geofence options creates a major barrier and safety risks for any victims who wishes to leave an abuser. One system advertises: “You're in your living room on a Saturday night. It's 11:30 pm and your teenage son was due home at 11 pm, half an hour ago. He doesn't have a cell phone for you to call him so you log onto the Internet and see a map of where his car is right now. With a click of the mouse, you turn on his dome light as a predetermined sign to ‘GET HOME!!’” Think about the accident rates of teens. Given how they get in more accidents than most, I can’t imagine that a service like that would be good for alerting a teen. It would put them at greater risk of injury. It is hard to imagine that his “teen monitoring” device is truly designed to use to enhance the safety of your teen driver when the features include “honk horn” and “disable starter” – rather it makes one wonder if the device was created and designed to be used as a stalking device to terrorize victims.
Talking Points: Cases involving GPS or other interesting technologies tend to get a lot of media attention. It’s important to discuss this with survivors, as it may impact their privacy. Additional Cases: Missouri, 2005 – Police officer put GPS in ex-girlfriend’s car. Officer was fired. Arizona, 2006 – Man tracked his ex-girlfriend with GPS and repeatedly threatened her. 2005 Story to Share: A six-year veteran of the Columbia (MO) Police Department has been dismissed from the force following his arrest Friday on suspicion of stalking a former girlfriend, using phone calls, letters and a vehicular tracking device. Smith was arrested at his Ash Street apartment at 7 p.m. Friday, a day after a 21-year-old woman found what appeared to be a tracking device concealed in her vehicle. She told police that her relationship with Smith lasted approximately seven months, and that since they broke up in mid-December, she has received anonymous letters, phone calls and text messages “of a disturbing nature.” “Finding the device was a significant event for the victim,” Martin said. “Obviously she was greatly concerned and came to us after that.” An ongoing investigation determined that the tracking device belonged to Smith, according to a police news release. He was at first placed on administrative leave, then fired, Martin said.
Talking Points: Many survivors won’t know how the abuser is monitoring their location, they just know that the abuser knows too much about their location. Advocates and law enforcement can help the survivor log incidents to help narrow down if abuser is using the phone or the vehicle. Strategizing around the discovery and removal of any GPS is important. Either may alert the abuser that the victim is seeking services and found the device, increasing safety risks and potentially destroy evidence if the victim was considering talking to law enforcement for investigation.
Point of the Slide: To discuss ways that survivors can safety plan and be strategic around location settings. Sample Delivery : “It is important for advocates to be familiar with the location settings on various devices. Even if advocates do not use social networking location applications, they should become familiar with the privacy settings.”
Point of the Slide: To discuss ways that survivors can safety plan and be strategic around location settings. Sample Delivery: “ Users should be aware of their privacy and location settings prior to sharing pics or updating their status on their smart phones. It is up to the user to opt-out of location services. Smart phone and standard phone users must adjust the settings on their phone and the websites associated with the service used. Take Twitter for example, one must turn the location setting off on their smart phone and their Twitter settings online.”
Point of the Slide: To discuss ways that survivors can safety plan and be strategic around location settings. Sample Delivery: “Visit the cell phone service provider for assistance in exploring application installed on a cell phone and its location settings. Jailbroken iPhones may be more tricky as it allows application icons to be hidden. Blackberry application icons can be hidden but are not difficult to find if the advocate is familiar with blackberry menus.”
Curriculum revised: Summer 2010 Using this curriculum: Adapt the patter to your style and add stories from your experience or community. We have included talking points and some stories in the notes section throughout the power point. These notes are just here to give you some ideas - they are not meant to be covered in full. Skim the notes when you feel like you need some backup, but when you have your own stories, please use them (and share them with all of us through the Tech Advocate Listserv). The most boring trainings are those where the trainer reads a script. Use your own style and personality to make this rather overwhelming information more accessible and interesting. Presentation Titles: We often change our presentation title depending on the audience. When choosing titles and writing descriptions, we suggest staying away from using the phrase “cyberstalking” because this training covers so much more than just computers and Internet, which is what the term cyber usually conveys. Below are some examples that you could use: Technology & Internet Safety: Issues for Victims & Advocates Maintaining Safety in a Digital Age From Phones to Facebook: Technology and Survivors Technology, Stalking, & Victim Safety
Talking Points: There are a variety of ways that survivors use the Internet. As service providers, we want to be thinking about how we can provide information online while also maintaining confidentiality and safety.
Talking Points: Emails are not a confidential way for survivors to communicate about violence they are experiencing. Their computer activity may be monitored by the abuser. Although many services claim to wipe the computer’s history so your activity on it cannot be monitored, it is impossible to fully erase the activity history. These services can offer a false sense of security to survivors who think they can wipe clean any history of searches for services, etc, that they don’t want the abuser to know about. Even if the abuser doesn’t know how to recover deleted activity, if the abuser regularly monitors the computer activity and then suddenly the history is empty – the abuser could be suspicious, which increases safety risks. It’s very important for survivor’s to keep their security on the computer up-to-date to minimize the risk of monitoring, but it’s just as important to understand that these securities don’t eliminate the possibility of monitoring.
Talking Points: Safety planning around computers and the Internet is two-fold: the survivor needs to plan around the abuser trying to monitor communications or find her and she needs to also plan around other people giving away information that the abuser could then use to find or monitor her. Since knowing the survivor’s email address can help the abuser harass and possibly locate her, it’s important that mutual friends or family remain cautious around their use of email. Using the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) option on email allows forwards to be sent without everyone seeing who it was sent to. In order for law enforcement to find where an email originated from and connect it to the abuser, they will need it in it’s original form on the computer. When we talk about a “safer” computer – it means one that the abuser has not had physical or remote (thru communication) access to. This could be one from a local library or service provider. One suggestion we provide to survivors is to open a new email account on a “safer” computer and then only check that account from “safer” computers that the abuser should not be able to monitor. If the abuser doesn’t know this account exists, the survivor will then have a means of communicating privately (minus general Internet concerns – remember that a conversation in person or over the phone will give the most confidentiality).
Talking Points: The term “Spyware” refers to computer monitoring software. Spyware vs. Adware: Spyware is a program purposely put on someone’s computer by another person to monitor their computer activity. Adware is attached to games and tools that computer users may download to track marketing related activities for companies. Spyware was originally developed to monitor children’s internet use and was often referred to as “Net Nannies”. Companies quickly began to also market these products to “monitor spouses”. The marketing for this is often clear on using secretly against your intimate partner.
Talking Points: Spyware is installed either by downloading software on the actual computer when the abuser has physical access, or by sending an email or instant message. Some have documents or greeting cards that can be opened or a link that can be clicked to start an automatic download of the software onto the computer without any notice to the computer user at all. From that point on, the person who sent the spyware has the ability to monitor all computer activity of the victim. Many assume that if two people are married and the computer is joint property, than monitoring can occur without any legal recourse. This is not true. Many cases have successfully argued that the monitoring was “interception of electronic communication”, invasion of the one partner’s privacy, or some other crime.
Talking Points: Again, a “safer” computer is one that the abuser has not had physical or remote access to and the survivor feels safe communicating on. This could be one at a public library, friend’s house, or service provider. Encourage the audience to always ask survivors about their tech use and never make any assumptions about what may be happening or what may be a risk. Various products will scan the computer for any possible Spyware, but these may or may not detect all Spyware. It’s critical for survivors to understand that if a scan comes back saying nothing has been found – that doesn’t mean that Spyware isn’t actually there. Survivors should trust their gut – if they feel that their computer activity is being monitored, they should safety plan around their use of that computer. Again, one suggestion we provide to survivors is to open a new email account on a “safer” computer and then only check that account from “safer” computers that the abuser should not be able to monitor. If the abuser doesn’t know this account exists, the survivor will then have a safer means of communicating. It would be important to continue using the compromised computer for other regular searches and activities, as to not alert the abuser that spyware is suspected. New keyboards, a new mouse, or upgrades/repairs to the computer by or from the abuser could be a red flag. If a survivor starts noticing that the abuser knows too much after something like this, try replacing the piece or using a safer computer.
Talking Points: Almost everyone is using social networks today, including survivors and abusers. Many users do not understand or utilize all of the privacy options of the social networking site that they are using. Pictures and information posted on these sites are frequently used against people in court cases, hiring determinations, and by colleges and universities when looking through applications. Many of the sites are collecting a good amount of personal information about the users to use for marketing purposes. Tips: There are many articles on the CD/USB regarding privacy and safety when using social networking sites. If you have internet available, you can do a demo for the audience looking at privacy settings in Facebook or another social network.
NNEDV Safety Net Project. SafetyNet@nnedv.org
Talking Points: Without the right privacy options set, a person may come up in a search engine just for having a social networking site. Some or all of their information can show up, which can provide for a safety and privacy risk to someone who has relocated. It’s important that survivors with children discuss social networking use and privacy settings with children – there have been several cases where a survivor has been found by the abuser or stalker because of the information the children have posted online. We’re increasingly seeing problems with abusers posting false profiles of survivors. Several cases have involved an abuser creating a fake page impersonating the victim to create more harm, such as pretending she wants people sneaking in her house at night and pretending to rape her. Some have also created fake profiles to impersonate a friend of the survivor to try to get information from the survivor on her location. These fake sites and profiles can be difficult to take down. Some more reputable sites, like Facebook and Match.com have removed sites after being contacted that the site was false and problematic.
Curriculum revised: Summer 2010 Using this curriculum: Adapt the patter to your style and add stories from your experience or community. We have included talking points and some stories in the notes section throughout the power point. These notes are just here to give you some ideas - they are not meant to be covered in full. Skim the notes when you feel like you need some backup, but when you have your own stories, please use them (and share them with all of us through the Tech Advocate Listserv). The most boring trainings are those where the trainer reads a script. Use your own style and personality to make this rather overwhelming information more accessible and interesting. Presentation Titles: We often change our presentation title depending on the audience. When choosing titles and writing descriptions, we suggest staying away from using the phrase “cyberstalking” because this training covers so much more than just computers and Internet, which is what the term cyber usually conveys. Below are some examples that you could use: Technology & Internet Safety: Issues for Victims & Advocates Maintaining Safety in a Digital Age From Phones to Facebook: Technology and Survivors Technology, Stalking, & Victim Safety
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