Technology facilitated abuse is a form of coercion and harassment in situations of domestic and family violence.
It refers to the use of mobile, internet and surveillance technologies to cause personal harm such as sexual harassment, stalking, partner violence and image-based abuse.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is leading a federal government grants program which is a part of a national plan to end family violence by 2032.
She says the abuse can be identified in many different forms.
"When we think about how technology is actually infiltrating almost every aspect of our lives, you know, including electronic toasters and refrigerators, we've seen things like the manipulation of home thermostats, lighting and Smart TV systems, drones monitoring safe houses, and even cars programmed to stall the moment they drive more than one kilometre beyond their home. So they're really powerful ways to coerce control and surveil people through technology."
The eSafety Commissioner says one in every two people in Australia experiences technology-facilitated abuse at some point in their lifetime.
Domestic, family and sexual violence occurs across all ages and demographic groups, but mainly affects women and children.
The eSafety commissioner reports around 70 per cent of the online harm reports it receives are from women and girls.
Women are also nearly three times more likely than a man to have experienced violence by a partner. National Women’s Safety Alliance Director Katherine Berney says there are misconceptions around technology-facilitated abuse.
"We need to understand digital natives' perceptions of safety within apps. That's not just specifically dating apps, but it's also looking at social media, you know, people who've grown up putting their lives online, and that's a normal part of their existence and they think that you can get trolling or negative comments has been normalised, if you will, and we need to understand how people perceive themselves to be safe before we have damage in real life and actual long term damage from that from digital stalking, digital harassing, deep fakes. We need to understand what those perceptions of safety are."
According to Wesnet, an organisation which provides services to women and families experiencing domestic violence, over 99 per cent of frontline domestic violence practitioners have clients experiencing tech abuse.
