Tech-enabled violence against women and girls is a global emergency warns Mayor of London as he announces new £6m fund to support victims
- The Mayor of London and University College London (UCL) will today convene a major conference with tech leaders, survivors and partners to address the global epidemic of technology-enabled violence against women.
- Tech abuse against women and girls is rising, with abusers using mobile phones, doorbell cameras and social media to harass, stalk and monitor victims. More than 123,000 violent offences against women and girls involving a tech element were recorded nationally in a year1 according to the National Police Chiefs Council with the charity Refuge reporting a 207 per cent increase in tech-abuse referrals between 2018 and 2024.
- Mayor’s new £6million fund to trial new ways to support victims of tech-enabled VAWG – including those impacted by revenge porn, online harassment, AI deepfakes, and women controlled and monitored via doorbell cameras, social media and phone tracking.
- The Tech Abuse Conference brings together 250 people from around the world, including those with lived experience of tech abuse, policymakers, academics, industry, and more. Across the three days, participants will share their experiences and insights to take practical action to tackle tech abuse.
- Researchers from University College London (UCL) call for urgent global action to protect women and girls, with immediate steps to prevent tech abuse from being able to occur in the first place including compulsory safety-by-design approaches, conversations around digital consent – as well as greater joined-up and victim-survivor centred responses to tech abuse
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, will today announce a new £6million fund to tackle the burgeoning global emergency of tech-enabled Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG).
In a keynote speech at the landmark international conference focused on addressing the escalating issue, the Mayor will announce a new £6million fund to provide better support for victims and survivors of tech-enabled VAWG.
There has been an alarming rise in tech abuse crimes, where mobile phones, social media, and connected devices such as doorbell cameras, are being used by perpetrators to target, harass and abuse women and girls – as well as exacerbate controlling behaviour within domestic abuse.
The Tech Abuse Conference, organised by University College London (UCL), brings together 250 people from around the world, including those with lived experience of tech abuse, policymakers, academics, industry, and more. Across the three days, it will feature speakers, including victim-survivors of tech abuse, sharing their stories, researchers highlighting their latest findings on its prevalence, tech companies developing new safety systems and policy makers exploring how victims-survivors can be at the heart of responses to tech abuse.
New UCL research2 highlights that advances in technology are making it easier for perpetrators to carry out abuse remotely. It reveals that everyday devices such as mobile phones, camera doorbells, smart glasses, virtual smart home assistants and other connected devices (IoT) are being used to abuse, harass, monitor, intimidate, and gaslight victim-survivors and that manufacturers are not sufficiently considering domestic and family violence in the design of their products – providing opportunities for misuse. It highlights how there are significant gaps in defining, measuring and responding to tech abuse, and this having a significant impact on the ability of law enforcement agencies to respond to this crime globally.
The charity Refuge reported a 207 per cent increase in tech abuse referrals - including sexualized, image-based abuse, AI-generated deepfakes, revenge porn, sextortion, doxing, online harassment and grooming - between 2018 and 2024, and a further 62 per cent increase between 2024 and 2025, a surge in reported cases.3
UCL’s research found that nearly half of Refuge tech abuse referrals involved monitoring or controlling behaviours, yet only around five per cent of those most impacted had previously sought tech abuse support, and over 90 per cent did not know what support they needed.
Recent figures from the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) show that between August 2022 and July 2023, there were at least 123,515 Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) offences with an online or technology-enabled element, with a third of victims contacting the National Domestic Abuse Helpline reporting that abusers used technology to intensify abuse.
This Mayor’s £6million fund will spearhead a new collaborative approach to providing better support for victims and survivors of tech-enabled VAWG - including women and girls being stalked and those who are victims of other forms of tech-enabled VAWG such as deepfakes, revenge porn, ‘nudification’, cyber-flashing, and medical hijacking.
The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime will be consulting with victims-survivors, representatives from UK government and regulators, international stakeholders from the technology industry, academia and civil society to boost practical help and support.
This collaborative work will focus on how best to improve services for victims-survivors, tackle tech-enabled abuse in the long-term, improve criminal justice outcomes, and ultimately help to prevent the proliferation of tech abuse.
The Mayor will also set out how the conference is an opportunity to build new and stronger relationships with online, tech and gaming companies as vital partners – alongside specialists in the VAWG sector, women, girls, families and communities – to collaborate and deliver positive opportunities to help make all our technology safer by design and less susceptible to being used to abuse and control.
The Tech Abuse Conference builds on the Mayor’s longstanding leadership in tackling the global scourge of gender-based violence, with the capital hosting London’s first ever international summit to tackle the global VAWG epidemic in 2025.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “Tech-enabled Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) is a global emergency. It transcends borders and the rapid pace of technology has provided new spaces and means for men to monitor, harass and control women and girls using everyday devices.
“It is turning doorbell cameras, social media, sunglasses and mobile phones into weapons used by perpetrators to target, harass and abuse in the digital age. The growth of other forms of tech enabled abuse such as revenge porn, online harassment and AI deepfakes underlines the urgent need to respond.
“That’s why it is so vital we are acting on this ground-breaking UCL research and bringing survivors, policy makers, academic experts, tech leaders, VAWG sector, campaigners, and those with lived experience of tech-abuse together to deliver lasting solutions and practical support. I’m backing this work with a new £6million fund to spearhead a urgent new approach to provide better support for victims and survivors of tech-enabled VAWG and deliver a safer London for all.”
Conference organiser, Dr Leonie Tanczer (UCL Computer Science), said: “Technology-facilitated abuse is no longer a niche or emerging issue — it is sadly part of the everyday reality of coercive control. We do not need to keep proving that it exists or that it matters. The urgent question is how we respond, and how we build systems, institutions and technologies that prevent harm rather than simply react to it after the fact.
“This conference is not a talking shop. It brings together researchers, frontline services, policymakers, industry, civil society and survivor-informed expertise to work through the real challenges each sector faces in recognising and responding to tech abuse. Through hands-on workshops and practical discussions, we want to identify what is already working, where current systems are failing, and where there are concrete opportunities for intervention.
“Too often, victims and survivors are left to manage risks created by technologies, institutions and infrastructures they did not design and cannot control. That has to change. Safety, consent, prevention and perpetrator accountability must be built into products, policies and frontline responses from the outset. That is why this conference is about moving from awareness to action, from fragmented responses to shared accountability, and from simply naming the problem to building the conditions for real-world change.”
Director of the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection, DAC Helen Millichap said: “We welcome all efforts to tackle the threat of tech-enabled abuse and are pleased funding has been secured to support those who come forward for support.
“These crimes can leave long-lasting, devastating impacts on victims and we know they are vastly under-reported which is why it is important we maximise our efforts to tackle the prevalence of online harm, in all its forms, by recognising and disrupting predatory behaviour.
“We are seeing progress, including recent changes to legislation, but there is always more that can be done, and that comes from working collectively across the system to prevent these crimes and reduce the number of victims in the first place.”
Emma Lingley-Clark, Interim CEO at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust said: "The Suzy Lamplugh Trust are thrilled to announce that the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) has recently recommissioned the pan-London Stalking Support Service with an investment of £2.2 million including tech-facilitated support for victims. We are delighted to work with SherlockAI, Risk Crew, Kulpa and SWGfL to deliver the service which recognises the potential of emerging technologies to pose an opportunity as well as risk and embraces technological advances whilst ensuring safety by design.
“The project recognises growing concerns relating to tech-enabled stalking and harassment by working with technology specialists to support safety assessments for victims including what personal information is publicly available about them. The service will also work to take down harmful social media content related to stalking conduct and support victims to collect court-admissible digital evidence. An AI chatbot will also be carefully managed to provide victims with vital information about support services and steps to stay safe."
Amanda Storey, VP Trust & Safety, EMEA, Google, said: “At Google, we recognise the harm caused by technology-facilitated abuse, which requires a unified, trauma-informed response – through collaboration with victim-survivors, safety experts, civil society organisations, governments, and industry.
“We know that the psychological burden of dealing with nonconsensual intimate imagery can be overwhelming, and our tools are designed to help users going through this experience on Image Search and across our other products. We are proud to support this important conference to share our tools and to continue learning directly from experts and survivors.”
Adele Zeynep Walton, online safety campaigner with Families and Survivors to Prevent Online Suicide Harm, award-winning journalist and author of Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World, said: “Technology is shaping how a generation understands relationships, masculinity and violence, so we can’t talk about violence against women and girls without talking about the online world too. After losing my sister to a harmful online forum, I’ve seen firsthand the devastating consequences of digital spaces without accountability.
“Investment in tackling tech-enabled violence against women and girls is a vital step in the right direction, particularly at a time when so many young women are facing misogyny and harm online every day. But alongside investment, we also need far greater accountability from tech companies whose platforms continue to amplify harmful and dangerous content.”
London Victims’ Commissioner, Andrea Simon, said: “As technology has created new ways for perpetrators to exert control and instil fear, victims and survivors of violence against women and girls, stalking and harassment report that online abuse is now routinely a feature of the harm they experience.
“While recent legislative reform has created welcome new offences for tech-enabled abuse, it is vital that both prevention and support for victims are also prioritised. We need a stronger focus on safety by design, the risks of the deliberate misuse of tech by perpetrators must be considered before they are made available. Victims must also have confidence that, when they report offences they will be taken seriously and are never be left to manage or respond to abuse on their own.
“Addressing these harms requires a whole-system response that can keep pace with rapidly evolving technology, and the Tech Abuse Conference provides a platform to share learning across sectors and develop effective, coordinated solutions.”
Notes to editors
- 1Between August 2022 and July 2023 https://www.npcc.police.uk/our-work/violence-against-women-and-girls/
UCL Research2 evidences that:
- Connected devices (IoT) have been used to abuse, harass, monitor, intimidate, and gaslight victim-survivors. Manufacturers are not sufficiently considering domestic and family violence in the design of their products – providing opportunities for misuse. [Brown, A., Harkin, D., & Tanczer, L. (2024). Safeguarding the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) for Victim-Survivors of Domestic and Family Violence (DFV): Anticipating Exploitative Use and Encouraging Safety-by-Design.Violence Against Women. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10778012231222486]
- Technology-facilitated abuse (Tech Abuse) refers to the deliberate (mis)use or repurposing of digital systems to coerce, harass, or abuse others. It does not require a personal relationship. There are significant gaps in defining and measuring tech abuse, with 67.2% of global *experts* not knowing any measurement tools – and of those who did, the existent tools often did not measure tech abuse in all its forms. This has significant impact on ability to respond to this crime. [Koukopoulos, N., Janickyj, M., & Tanczer, L. (2025). Defining and Conceptualizing Technology-Facilitated Abuse (“Tech Abuse”): Findings of a Global Delphi Study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08862605241310465]
- Cyberstalking growing at a faster rate than other forms of stalking and is disproportionately affecting young people, women, and members of the lesbian gay and bisexual community. This study was the first to use nationally representative data from CSEW and showed not only the increase in cyberstalking – but that it is under-recognised as a serious offence with implications for how when (and if) people seek help. [Janickyj, M., Blom, N., Tanczer, L. (2025). Online and Offline Stalking Victimisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Its Predictors and Victim/Survivors’ Views on Criminalisation. The British Journal of Criminology. https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/bjc/azaf064/8216857]
- According to some sources, up to 80% of parents use apps to protect their children’s safety, security and privacy. However, UCL research showed that ‘unofficial’ parental control apps have excessive access to personal data and can hide their presence, often tantamount to stalkerware, raising significant concerns for safety. [Maier, E.-M., Tanczer, L. M., & Klausner, L. D. (2025). Surveillance Disguised as Protection: A Comparative Analysis of Sideloaded and In-Store Parental Control Apps. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2025(2), 107–124. https://petsymposium.org/popets/2025/popets-2025-0052.php]
- There are perceptions that police do not recognize tech-facilitated domestic abuse (tech abuse) as an aspect of coercive control and thus do not recognize its seriousness, that police receive inadequate training about tech abuse, and have insufficient time and resources to tackle it. [Douglas, H., Tanczer, L., McLachlan, F., & Harris, B. (2023). Policing Technology-Facilitated Domestic Abuse (TFDA): Views of Service Providers in Australia and the United Kingdom. Journal of Family Violence. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10896-023-00619-2]
+++
- 3Referrals to Refuge’s Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment Team rose by 62% in the first nine months of 2025 compared with the same period last year.
- UCL’s International Tech Abuse Conference is supported by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). MOPAC lead the Mayor’s work to tackle tech-enabled Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). The Mayor’s refreshed Tackling VAWG Strategy for 2026-2029 is due to be published in the coming months.
This Mayor’s £6million fund will spearhead a new collaborative approach to providing better support for victims and survivors of tech-enabled VAWG - including women and girls being stalked and those who are victims of other forms of tech-enabled VAWG such as deepfakes, revenge porn, ‘nudification’, cyber-flashing, and medical hijacking. This £6million investment will be spread over the next three years, with £2million invested over each year.
UCL organised three-day Tech abuse conference:
The first day prioritises tech abuse prevention and policy on the local, national and international stage. This includes focusing on understanding lived experience, safe online experiences and what works interventions. This will include addresses from the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, Special Envoy on Women and Girls Baroness Harman, and Domestic Abuse Commissioner Dame Nicole Jacbos – as well as practical workshops from Google and SWGfL.
The second day explores lessons from the frontline, highlights policy and regulatory gaps, seeks to understand how tech abuse surfaces and develop possible interventions. This will include insights from Ofcom, the domestic abuse charity Refuge, the anti-discrimination organisation Glitch, frontline services including the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection (NCVPP) as well as how tech abuse surfaces in healthcare settings. Hands on demos will be provided by TikTok and Kaspersky.
The third day focuses on action from the tech industry, practical responses, and international frameworks. It will include insight from tech giants including Meta, Bumble, Aylo and Match.com – as well international bodies UNWomen and UNFPA. Presenters will host hands-on sessions on detecting hidden devices, and emerging safety features to prevent and respond to tech abuse in the online world.
- Last year, the Mayor – through MOPAC and with the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE) – hosted London’s first ever international summit to tackle the global VAWG epidemic. It brought together leaders and advocates from several cities – including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bogota, Freetown, Louisville, Nairobi, Quezon City, Paris, Renca and Stockholm – at City Hall, where they committed to an international declaration based on parts of the Mayor’s 2022 Tackling VAWG Strategy. The CHANGE Network are now (currently underway) leading a dedicated programme of work on Tech Abuse, which MOPAC have also supported. It is exploring best practice and approaches from around the world. UCL has contributed to this, and also attended the summit last year.
- The VAWG Strategic Threat and Risk Assessment published by the National Police Chief's Council also identified tech enabled VAWG as one of the four biggest threats to women and girls, while stalking and harassment accounts for the majority (85 per cent) of all online and tech enabled offences.
To meet rising demand, Refuge set up a specialist technology-facilitated abuse and economic empowerment service in 2017, the only one of its kind in England. Since then, cases have grown both in quantity and complexity with Refuge reporting a 207% increase in referrals to the Tech Abuse Team compared to its first year of service. New analysis shows the specialist team saw a 92% increase in referrals in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2019. Refuge calls for tech-facilitated abuse to be a priority in government VAWG strategy
1 in 8 (13%) girls aged 13-18 have received sexual threats online—including rape threats—from strangers or people they know; 77% of 7–21-year-olds have experienced some form of online harm in the last year, including cyberstalking, seeing unwanted sexual images, and individuals pretending to be someone they’re not. girlguiding-girls-attitudes-survey-2025.pdf
Janickyj, M., & Tanczer, L. (2025). Tech Abuse Personas: Exploring Help-Seeking Behaviours and Support Needs of Victim/Survivors of Technology-Facilitated Abuse. Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘25), Yokohama, Japan, April 26 – May 01 2025. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706599.3719986
- In this study, UCL analysed 1,525 tech abuse referrals to Refuge between April 2019 and September 2023, representing 1,478 individuals
- The most common tech abuse behaviour was monitoring/controlling, present in 48.69% of referrals.
- Harassment appeared in 30.97% of referrals.
- Among the “average” survivor persona, tech abuse commonly involved mobile phones/calls/messages: 53.95%, followed by social media: 11.39%, location tracking: 10.08%, economic systems: 4.38%, and security devices: 3.58%
- Only 5.20% of the most common victim/survivor group had sought support for tech abuse before coming to Refuge.
- A striking 92.16% of the most common victim/survivor group reported not knowing what kind of support they needed.
- The most helpful interventions were practical: securing accounts: 23.36%, guidance/resources to secure accounts/devices: 22.21%, and securing location: 11.45%
- Tech abuse commonly co-occurred with other abuse: for the most common persona, 98.95% experienced psychological abuse, 70.06% physical abuse, 57.76% financial abuse, and 39.60% sexual abuse.
Non-exhaustive list of examples of Technology facilitated gender-based violence
[1] Tanczer, L., López-Neira, I., & Parkin, S. (2021). 'I Feel Like We’re Really Behind the Game': Perspectives of the United Kingdom's Intimate Partner Violence Support Sector on the Rise of Technology-Facilitated Abuse. Journal of Gender-Based Violence, 5(3), 431–450. https://doi.org/10.1332/239868021X16290304343529
[2] Maier, E.-M., Tanczer, L. M., & Klausner, L. D. (2025). Surveillance Disguised as Protection: A Comparative Analysis of Sideloaded and In-Store Parental Control Apps. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2025(2), 107–124. https://petsymposium.org/popets/2025/popets-2025-0052.pdf
[3] Brown, A., Harkin, D., & Tanczer, L. M. (2025). Safeguarding the “Internet of Things” for Victim-Survivors of Domestic and Family Violence: Anticipating Exploitative Use and Encouraging Safety-by-Design. Violence Against Women, 31(5), 1039-1062. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10778012231222486
[4] Madeleine Janickyj, Niels Blom, Leonie Maria Tanczer, Online and Offline Stalking Victimisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Its Predictors and Victim/Survivors’ Views on Criminalisation, The British Journal of Criminology, 2025;, azaf064, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf064
[5] Straw I, Tanczer L (2023) Safeguarding patients from technology-facilitated abuse in clinical settings: A narrative review. PLOS Digit Health 2(1): e0000089. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000089
Straw, I., Dobbin, J., Luna Reaver, D., & Tanczer, L. (2023). Diagnosing Digital Pathologies and Preventing Digital Deaths: Clinical Simulation Training in Medical Emergencies Relating to Technology. Emergency Medicine Journal, 40, 888. https://emj.bmj.com/content/40/12/888.1
Notes to editors:
- 1Between August 2022 and July 2023 https://www.npcc.police.uk/our-work/violence-against-women-and-girls/
UCL Research2 evidences that:
- Connected devices (IoT) have been used to abuse, harass, monitor, intimidate, and gaslight victim-survivors. Manufacturers are not sufficiently considering domestic and family violence in the design of their products – providing opportunities for misuse. [Brown, A., Harkin, D., & Tanczer, L. (2024). Safeguarding the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) for Victim-Survivors of Domestic and Family Violence (DFV): Anticipating Exploitative Use and Encouraging Safety-by-Design.Violence Against Women. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10778012231222486]
- Technology-facilitated abuse (Tech Abuse) refers to the deliberate (mis)use or repurposing of digital systems to coerce, harass, or abuse others. It does not require a personal relationship. There are significant gaps in defining and measuring tech abuse, with 67.2% of global *experts* not knowing any measurement tools – and of those who did, the existent tools often did not measure tech abuse in all its forms. This has significant impact on ability to respond to this crime. [Koukopoulos, N., Janickyj, M., & Tanczer, L. (2025). Defining and Conceptualizing Technology-Facilitated Abuse (“Tech Abuse”): Findings of a Global Delphi Study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08862605241310465]
- Cyberstalking growing at a faster rate than other forms of stalking and is disproportionately affecting young people, women, and members of the lesbian gay and bisexual community. This study was the first to use nationally representative data from CSEW and showed not only the increase in cyberstalking – but that it is under-recognised as a serious offence with implications for how when (and if) people seek help. [Janickyj, M., Blom, N., Tanczer, L. (2025). Online and Offline Stalking Victimisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Its Predictors and Victim/Survivors’ Views on Criminalisation. The British Journal of Criminology. https://academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/bjc/azaf064/8216857]
- According to some sources, up to 80% of parents use apps to protect their children’s safety, security and privacy. However, UCL research showed that ‘unofficial’ parental control apps have excessive access to personal data and can hide their presence, often tantamount to stalkerware, raising significant concerns for safety. [Maier, E.-M., Tanczer, L. M., & Klausner, L. D. (2025). Surveillance Disguised as Protection: A Comparative Analysis of Sideloaded and In-Store Parental Control Apps. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2025(2), 107–124. https://petsymposium.org/popets/2025/popets-2025-0052.php]
- There are perceptions that police do not recognize tech-facilitated domestic abuse (tech abuse) as an aspect of coercive control and thus do not recognize its seriousness, that police receive inadequate training about tech abuse, and have insufficient time and resources to tackle it. [Douglas, H., Tanczer, L., McLachlan, F., & Harris, B. (2023). Policing Technology-Facilitated Domestic Abuse (TFDA): Views of Service Providers in Australia and the United Kingdom. Journal of Family Violence. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10896-023-00619-2]
+++
- 3Referrals to Refuge’s Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment Team rose by 62% in the first nine months of 2025 compared with the same period last year.
- UCL’s International Tech Abuse Conference is supported by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). MOPAC lead the Mayor’s work to tackle tech-enabled Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). The Mayor’s refreshed Tackling VAWG Strategy for 2026-2029 is due to be published in the coming months.
This Mayor’s £6million fund will spearhead a new collaborative approach to providing better support for victims and survivors of tech-enabled VAWG - including women and girls being stalked and those who are victims of other forms of tech-enabled VAWG such as deepfakes, revenge porn, ‘nudification’, cyber-flashing, and medical hijacking. This £6million investment will be spread over the next three years, with £2million invested over each year.
UCL organised three-day Tech abuse conference:
The first day prioritises tech abuse prevention and policy on the local, national and international stage. This includes focusing on understanding lived experience, safe online experiences and what works interventions. This will include addresses from the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, Special Envoy on Women and Girls Baroness Harman, and Domestic Abuse Commissioner Dame Nicole Jacbos – as well as practical workshops from Google and SWGfL.
The second day explores lessons from the frontline, highlights policy and regulatory gaps, seeks to understand how tech abuse surfaces and develop possible interventions. This will include insights from Ofcom, the domestic abuse charity Refuge, the anti-discrimination organisation Glitch, frontline services including the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection (NCVPP) as well as how how tech abuse surfaces in healthcare settings. Hands on demos will be provided by TikTok and Kaspersky.
The third day focuses on action from the tech industry, practical responses, and international frameworks. It will include insight from tech giants including Meta, Bumble, Aylo and Match.com – as well international bodies UNWomen and UNFPA. Presenters will host hands-on sessions on detecting hidden devices, and emerging safety features to prevent and respond to tech abuse in the online world.
- Last year, the Mayor – through MOPAC and with the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE) – hosted London’s first ever international summit to tackle the global VAWG epidemic. It brought together leaders and advocates from several cities – including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bogota, Freetown, Louisville, Nairobi, Quezon City, Paris, Renca and Stockholm – at City Hall, where they committed to an international declaration based on parts of the Mayor’s 2022 Tackling VAWG Strategy. The CHANGE Network are now (currently underway) leading a dedicated programme of work on Tech Abuse, which MOPAC have also supported. It is exploring best practice and approaches from around the world. UCL has contributed to this, and also attended the summit last year.
- The VAWG Strategic Threat and Risk Assessment published by the National Police Chief's Council also identified tech enabled VAWG as one of the four biggest threats to women and girls, while stalking and harassment accounts for the majority (85 per cent) of all online and tech enabled offences.
To meet rising demand, Refuge set up a specialist technology-facilitated abuse and economic empowerment service in 2017, the only one of its kind in England. Since then, cases have grown both in quantity and complexity with Refuge reporting a 207% increase in referrals to the Tech Abuse Team compared to its first year of service. New analysis shows the specialist team saw a 92% increase in referrals in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2019. Refuge calls for tech-facilitated abuse to be a priority in government VAWG strategy
1 in 8 (13%) girls aged 13-18 have received sexual threats online—including rape threats—from strangers or people they know; 77% of 7–21-year-olds have experienced some form of online harm in the last year, including cyberstalking, seeing unwanted sexual images, and individuals pretending to be someone they’re not. girlguiding-girls-attitudes-survey-2025.pdf
Janickyj, M., & Tanczer, L. (2025). Tech Abuse Personas: Exploring Help-Seeking Behaviours and Support Needs of Victim/Survivors of Technology-Facilitated Abuse. Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘25), Yokohama, Japan, April 26 – May 01 2025. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706599.3719986
- In this study, UCL analysed 1,525 tech abuse referrals to Refuge between April 2019 and September 2023, representing 1,478 individuals
- The most common tech abuse behaviour was monitoring/controlling, present in 48.69% of referrals.
- Harassment appeared in 30.97% of referrals.
- Among the “average” survivor persona, tech abuse commonly involved mobile phones/calls/messages: 53.95%, followed by social media: 11.39%, location tracking: 10.08%, economic systems: 4.38%, and security devices: 3.58%
- Only 5.20% of the most common victim/survivor group had sought support for tech abuse before coming to Refuge.
- A striking 92.16% of the most common victim/survivor group reported not knowing what kind of support they needed.
- The most helpful interventions were practical: securing accounts: 23.36%, guidance/resources to secure accounts/devices: 22.21%, and securing location: 11.45%
- Tech abuse commonly co-occurred with other abuse: for the most common persona, 98.95% experienced psychological abuse, 70.06% physical abuse, 57.76% financial abuse, and 39.60% sexual abuse.
Non-exhaustive list of examples of Technology facilitated gender-based violence
[1] Tanczer, L., López-Neira, I., & Parkin, S. (2021). 'I Feel Like We’re Really Behind the Game': Perspectives of the United Kingdom's Intimate Partner Violence Support Sector on the Rise of Technology-Facilitated Abuse. Journal of Gender-Based Violence, 5(3), 431–450. https://doi.org/10.1332/239868021X16290304343529
[2] Maier, E.-M., Tanczer, L. M., & Klausner, L. D. (2025). Surveillance Disguised as Protection: A Comparative Analysis of Sideloaded and In-Store Parental Control Apps. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2025(2), 107–124. https://petsymposium.org/popets/2025/popets-2025-0052.pdf
[3] Brown, A., Harkin, D., & Tanczer, L. M. (2025). Safeguarding the “Internet of Things” for Victim-Survivors of Domestic and Family Violence: Anticipating Exploitative Use and Encouraging Safety-by-Design. Violence Against Women, 31(5), 1039-1062. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10778012231222486
[4] Madeleine Janickyj, Niels Blom, Leonie Maria Tanczer, Online and Offline Stalking Victimisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Its Predictors and Victim/Survivors’ Views on Criminalisation, The British Journal of Criminology, 2025;, azaf064, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf064
[5] Straw I, Tanczer L (2023) Safeguarding patients from technology-facilitated abuse in clinical settings: A narrative review. PLOS Digit Health 2(1): e0000089. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000089
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