Sexual and other violence on the Net

This morning I was in a committee meeting for work, around privacy issues and the Internet. Not many feminists around the table, so they hadn't thought about issues of online privacy and violence againt women - it was the first thing in my mind though.

For example, an abused woman who goes online to find help to get out of a violent relationship, and unwittingly leaves traces of her online activity on the family computer. Her partner can track down her online activities and become more violent towards her.

Or how about some not-so-healthy teenaged boys who use Internet such that it becomes a tool of violence against teenage girls. What do I mean? You have probably heard about this practise of some boys: while chatting online with a girl, both of them using webcams, he asks her to remove a piece of clothing - or all of it. Wanting to please her friend, and not thinking about the consequences, she does it. The next day, the video of her stripping is all over the Net: on YouTube.com, in fellow classmates' computers, on their Websites ...

I think about a teenage girl and an older abused woman, both of whom are close to my heart, and I shudder...

For information on how to protect data and personal data on your computer, including your identity, check out Take Back the Tech's tech tips. To find out what you can do to erase the evidence of your activity online, see this page on Take Back the Tech.

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