As part of our Community Resilience and Online Safety programme we recently facilitated a training and awareness event at Croydon Central Library exploring how technology is increasingly used to control, harass or intimidate people.
Whether this is tracking partners via mobile phones, surveillance through webcams and other devices, coercive behaviours and cyber bullying; it’s an increasingly prevalent subject.
The statistics are stark with 13% of women experiencing online abuse see it progress to the real world and a staggering 46% of people under the age of 30 report being tracked by a partner without their consent.
Knowing what to do to be safer online and be aware of where there are risks is crucial.
We were joined by the MET Cyber Protect Team and Bromley & Croydon Women’s Aid as part of our VCS training programme to understand the extent of the problem and what technical measures we can put in place,
We also explored tools from the Cyber Helpline as well as the fantastic Kulpa app to support the gathering of evidence and submitting.
In parallel we had a programme if micro-workshops lead by our Digital Ambassadors Jody Micallef and Joshua Russell who took us through how to secure Facebook privacy settings and the rise of AI and Image based Sexual Abuse (IBSA).
We have been supporting people who have been hacked or scammed for some time now and there is huge challenge in re-building (or building from scratch) the confidence to re-engage with the web and services we need to access to ‘be included’.
We feel very strongly about this working full time with the digital inclusion space and where we have seen this intersect is a reality that those without the confidence of ability seek the right technical help or be able to manage privacy settings will not only be more at risk but will experience exponentially worsening outcomes.
Our next two training session will take place in Brixton later this month at WeAre336
Places still available here
