Safe Exit Button
What It Does: Our website features a discreet safe exit button, placed at the bottom left corner of your screen. Pressing this button quickly redirects you to a safe website, while simultaneously opening a grocery shopping site in a new tab. This feature is designed to help you leave our site swiftly and subtly, minimizing the chance of someone noticing your visit.
Limitations & Workarounds:
- History Trace: Although the button avoids creating a direct history entry, savvy individuals may still check browser history. We recommend regularly clearing your browser history after each session.
- Pop-up Blockers: Some browsers block new tabs from opening. Please ensure pop-ups are enabled for our site.
- Network Speeds: The speed of redirecting and opening a new tab can vary based on your internet connection.
Essential Online Safety Practices
- Incognito Mode: Use your browser’s private or incognito mode when visiting sensitive websites. This mode doesn’t save your browsing history, cookies, or site data.
- Clearing Browser History: Make it a habit to clear your browsing history, cookies, and cache frequently. This step is critical to leaving no digital traces behind.
- Using Safe Devices: Whenever possible, use devices that your abuser does not have access to. Public computers, like those in a library, can be safer options.
- Creating Safe Accounts: Use email and social media accounts unknown to the abuser. Ensure that these accounts have strong, unique passwords.
- Secure Wi-Fi Connections: Avoid using shared or easily accessible Wi-Fi networks for sensitive browsing. If you must, using a VPN can help mask your online activities.
- Be Mindful of Shared Accounts: Be cautious of any accounts (like Netflix or email) shared with the abuser. They can track your activity through these.
- Regular Password Changes: Regularly change your passwords and avoid using predictable passwords or those you have used before.
- Avoid Saving Passwords: Do not save passwords on shared or easily accessible devices.
- Physical Security: Keep your devices secure and out of reach from the abuser. Consider using passcodes or biometric locks.
- Emergency Exit Planning: Know how to quickly close or hide windows and tabs. Keyboard shortcuts like ‘Alt+F4’ for Windows or ‘Command+Q’ for Mac can quickly close the current window.
Understanding Digital Footprints
Every online activity leaves a digital footprint. Be aware of the traces you leave – from browsing history to social media posts. Minimize these footprints by avoiding sharing personal information or details that could hint at your location or activities.
Seeking Help
If you are in a situation that requires immediate help, consider reaching out to local support services, helplines, or trusted friends. Planning and having a discreet communication channel can be crucial.
Technology Should Help Us Connect, Not Cause Harm
Technology is part of how we communicate, build relationships, organize, and stay connected to our communities. It can also be used to cause harm through harassment, stalking, surveillance, impersonation, threats, and other forms of digital abuse.
CSVANW’s Tech Safety resources are designed to help Native survivors, advocates, families, and communities better understand technology-facilitated violence and take steps toward greater safety.
What Is Tech-Facilitated Violence?
Technology can connect us, but it can also be used as a tool of power and control.
Technology-facilitated violence happens when someone uses phones, social media, apps, online accounts, location services, or other technology to harm, monitor, threaten, harass, intimidate, or control another person.
This can happen within intimate relationships, families, friendships, or online spaces and can be part of a larger pattern of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual violence, stalking, or harassment.
It can include:
• Repeated unwanted messages, calls, or online harassment
• Monitoring someone’s phone, accounts, or online activity
• Tracking someone’s location without their knowledge or consent
• Pressuring someone to share passwords or account access
• Creating fake accounts or impersonating someone online
• Sharing private information, images, or content without consent
• Using technology to threaten, embarrass, isolate, or control someone
Digital abuse is still abuse. Everyone deserves safety, privacy, respect, and consent—online and offline.
Recognize the Signs
Is Technology Being Used to Harm or Control You?
Technology-facilitated violence may not always be easy to recognize. Sometimes behaviors that are presented as love, concern, protection, or “checking in” can become controlling or harmful.
Some signs may include:
• Someone constantly asking where you are or demanding that you share your location
• Someone pressuring you to give them your passwords or access to your accounts
• Someone checking your phone, messages, social media, or online activity without permission
• Receiving repeated unwanted calls, texts, messages, or friend requests
• Someone seeming to know information about your location or activities that you did not share
• Changes appearing on your device, accounts, passwords, or privacy settings that you did not make
• Someone creating fake accounts or pretending to be you online
• Someone threatening to share private information, messages, photos, or other content
• Technology being used to intimidate, embarrass, isolate, threaten, or control you
Trust what you are noticing. You have the right to set boundaries around your devices, accounts, location, communication, and personal information.
Before Changing Your Technology
Your Safety Comes First
If you believe someone may be using technology to monitor, track, harass, or control you, changing passwords, deleting apps, turning off location sharing, blocking accounts, or changing device settings may feel like the first thing to do.
However, making sudden changes could sometimes alert the person who may be monitoring your technology or cause their behavior to change or escalate.
You know your circumstances best. Consider your safety before making changes to a device or account that may be monitored.
When possible, consider talking with a trusted advocate or service provider about technology as part of your overall safety planning. An advocate can help you explore options without making decisions for you.
Safety planning should be survivor-led. There is no single technology safety plan that works for everyone.
For Advocates & Service Providers
Supporting Survivors Experiencing Technology-Facilitated Violence
Technology is increasingly part of how people communicate, maintain relationships, access services, and move through their daily lives. It can also become part of the violence, stalking, harassment, or control a survivor experiences.
Advocates and service providers can help by creating space for survivors to talk about how technology may be affecting their safety.
Consider incorporating technology into conversations about:
• Safety planning
• Phones and other devices
• Social media and online accounts
• Location sharing and tracking
• Passwords and account access
• Online harassment and stalking
• Documentation of technology-facilitated abuse
• Digital privacy and consent
Avoid assuming that deleting an account, getting a new phone, leaving social media, or disconnecting from technology is always the safest solution. Technology may also be an important connection to family, culture, community, services, work, school, and support.
Listen to survivors, respect their choices, and work alongside them to identify technology safety options that meet their individual needs.
Tech Safety for Native Youth
Healthy Relationships Include Digital Spaces
Phones, gaming, social media, messaging, and other digital spaces are a big part of how young people connect with friends, relatives, communities, and relationships.
Healthy relationships should include respect, trust, boundaries, communication, and consent, online and offline.
It is okay to set digital boundaries. A partner or friend does not automatically have the right to your passwords, location, messages, photos, accounts, or constant access to you.
Native youth should be able to:
• Decide who they communicate with online
• Set boundaries around texting, calling, and social media
• Say no to sharing passwords or account access
• Choose when and with whom they share their location
• Expect consent before private information or images are shared
• Recognize controlling or harmful digital behaviors
• Talk with a trusted person when something online does not feel right
• Support friends without blaming or judging them
Healthy relationships honor boundaries. Consent matters in digital spaces, too.
Resources
Please visit https://www.techsafety.org/resources for all resources and information on the use of technology for agencies and survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and trafficking.