That can include the use of technology to track your whereabouts, monitoring your internet activity, or using fake profiles for harassment excessive calls, emails and texts, or threatening, insulting or abusive messages to you or your family and friends. It is the use of technology to control, threaten, monitor or harass someone. There is a term for it: technology-facilitated abuse. Add in some wifi connected appliances, and it builds up a detailed picture of your daily life that could be weaponised in the wrong hands. Location services on mobile phones can be used as a means to keep an eye on someone’s location smart home technology, such as video doorbells, wifi connected alarms and IP connected cameras can be used to monitor who comes and goes from our homes and at what time, and what we are doing throughout the day. And it’s a problem that seems set to get worse as technology advances. Technology meant to keep us safe and make our lives easier has become a weapon to be used against us. Technology is playing an increasing role in violence against women, with 41 per cent of abused women saying they had experienced harassment or tracking by electronic means. One in five women in Ireland have experienced domestic violence, according to figures from Women’s Aid. Smartphone owners must activate the scan manually and, with no pop-ups or audio alerts, it could be some time before a person is aware that their movements are being tracked. Earlier this year Tile added a “scan and secure” feature to its app that allows both Tile owners and those without an account to scan for tags that may be travelling with them. They are designed to be subtle and when lost mode is activated, they use Tile’s network of users to ping their location back to the tag owner. Tile, for example, has small Bluetooth trackers the size of a button that can be hidden inside bags and wallets, or stuck to the underside of a bicycle frame. However, an unsuspecting victim could be carrying the tag around for a number of hours before being alerted, providing detailed location information to its owner.Īpple is not the only company to produce such tags. It was not intended to track people, either with or without their knowledge. It wasn’t supposed to be like this when Apple released the AirTag in April last year – it was intended as a way to keep track of your belongings: keys, bags even a scooter. In August a man appeared in court in Wales accused of stalking his former partner, one element of which involved glueing an AirTag under the bumper of her car. There are stories all over Twitter, Instagram and Reddit about incidents where people – often women – found they were being tracked without their knowledge. May took to Twitter to share her experience, noting that she was lucky enough to have been able to disable the tracker before she drove home, and warned others about the potential danger posed by the small tags. However, when she opened it she realised someone had used an AirTag to track her for more than two hours at an after-hours event at Disneyland. When Irish actor Hannah Rose May got an alert on her phone from Apple’s Find My app she didn’t think anything of it.
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