Technology is intimately intertwined with our daily lives and for people in abusive relationships, the internet and social media can become a perpetrator's playground. Case in point: according to expert in tech-enabled abuse Adam Dodge, "The average person has 80 apps on their phone and 90 online accounts. That's 170 different ways that somebody can reach out and monitor you, impersonate you, threaten you, stalk you, steal sensitive information and post it online, cause financial harm, send you unwanted photos, steal photos and post them online. The list goes on and on." And yet, Dodge also rightly points out that "in order to survive and thrive in the modern era you have to exist online." Fortunately, there are substantive actions everyone can take to safeguard their personal information and there are laws in place that protect individuals from tech-enabled abuse. In this episode, we expose the hazards of living in an online world while demystifying the process of creating a digital safety plan, the importance of collecting evidence of technology abuse, and how we might create a legal system that allows these crimes to be properly investigated.
Adam Dodge, a licensed attorney in California, is the founder of EndTAB (Ending Tech-Enabled Abuse) and spends a great deal of his time delivering innovative technology-enabled abuse trainings and presentations to organizations, nonprofits and governments around the world. Mr. Dodge’s work is characterized by his dedication to addressing the existing and future threats posed by technology to victims of crime and gender-based violence. He has written and presented extensively on cyberstalking, technology-enabled abuse, non-consensual pornography and co-authored a domestic violence advisory on the emerging threat of ‘deepfakes.’ Mr. Dodge is also a special advisor to the Coalition Against Stalkerware and sits on the World Economic Forum's Digital Justice Advisory Committee. Dedicated to advancing impact legislation and public policy, he is also a member of the Policy Advisory Council for the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence.