Many relationships that begin romantically can quickly become controlling, with partners reading emails, checking texts and locations of social media posts. Research conducted by Refuge in 2021 found that 1 in 3 women in the UK have experienced online abuse (perpetrated on social media or other online platform) at some point in their lives.
Online platforms are increasingly used to perpetrate domestic abuse
Online abuse can happen over long periods and escalates over time. It can include behaviours such as monitoring of social media profiles or emails, abuse over social media such as Facebook or Twitter, sharing intimate photos or videos without your consent, using GPS locators or spyware. Research by the Victim’s Commissioner (2022) found that 40% of victims of cyber stalking reported that they experienced this for more than 2 years.
Conviction data for image based sexual abuse (commonly referred to as ‘revenge pornography’) show that out of the 376 prosecutions for this offence recorded in the year ending March 2019, 83% (313) were flagged as being domestic abuse-related. (ONS, 2019)
Women’s Aid have some helpful ways that you can cover your tracks on line. Cover your tracks online – Women’s Aid
How to browse safely and cover your tracks
When you use a website, your browser will save some information about what pages you have visited. Your browser can also save your search terms, and all your browsing history may be saved by Google or Microsoft, depending on what your privacy settings are. If someone else has access to your device, or your Google or Microsoft account, they can look at your search history, your browsing history, and view the pages you have been looking at.
For many people with an abusive partner, this is very unsafe so you should take some steps to make sure your online activities are strictly private and cannot be accessed by anyone else.
Use Private Browsing
All browsers have a ‘Private’ browsing mode which will not save your browsing history – for Google it is ‘Incognito’, Microsoft has ‘InPrivate’, with Opera it is ‘Private’ and so on with the other browser vendors. You can usually start a private browsing session by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + N on a PC, or right-click the browser icon and choose private mode from there. On a phone just long-tap the icon.
When you first open a browser, always make sure you start it in the appropriate Private mode. But you must always close the browser window when you have finished. The EXIT SITE button above will not clear your browser history, it only takes you to another website.
Websites cannot delete your browsing history for you, unless you download an extension which is designed to do this – so you must always assume your history is being recorded if you are not in Private browsing mode.
What if you’ve already been using normal (non-private) browsing?
You should clear your browsing history manually if you think you may have been browsing in a normal browser window. Typically you just need to click or tap the menu button (3 dots) and choose ‘Delete Browsing Data’ (CTRL + SHIFT + DELETE on a PC), then delete your browsing history and ‘Cached images and files’ for however long you feel necessary, or for ‘All time’ if you want to be extra careful. Don’t delete your Passwords, and you should not need to delete Cookies (although it does not hurt to go through those occasionally and remove ones you don’t need!)
What about your online activity
Google and Microsoft may record your browsing and search activity, and Google can also record your YouTube viewing history and other data. It is worth checking what information has been saved – for Google, log in to your Google account and go to https://myactivity.google.com/ (or search for My Activity); for Microsoft, log in to your Microsoft account and go to https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/ (or search for ‘App and service activity). It is always a good idea to check these sites periodically to make sure your privacy settings are up to date.
If you are worried that someone may find emails that you have sent or received, you should delete them completely – deleted messages just go into the Deleted Items, Trash or Bin folders – you must delete the emails from these folders to fully remove them.
Social sites
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter / X, SnapChat etc. all have their own privacy settings, you should check these to make sure your recorded activities could not compromise your safety should anyone else have access to your accounts. Here are some links you may find useful:
https://www.facebook.com/privacy/center/
https://help.twitter.com/en/safety-and-security/
https://www.snap.com/en-GB/privacy/privacy-center
What about a VPN?
A VPN can only protect you against someone who is electronically observing your activity, such as a hacker. It will not encrypt your browsing history or make any of it private.
How to stay safe
Always make sure your devices are protected by a password, but if possible use someone else’s – a friend’s device or work computer. There are other aspects of online activity which may be of concern to you, such as Location Tracking, which can be used by various apps, vehicle trackers, fitness products, smart watches etc. You should consult the manufacturer’s website for details on how to disable tracking or access your location tracking data.
More information is available at https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/cover-your-tracks-online/