Tech Safety Checklist Divorce

Why Tech Safety Comes Before Everything Else

Approximately 97% of domestic violence survivors report experiencing some form of digital harassment, tracking, or surveillance. Before you contact an attorney, before you copy documents, before you tell anyone you're leaving — audit your digital exposure. A monitored phone undoes every other safety step because the abuser sees your searches, your calls, your location, and your plans in real time.

The goal is not to lock down your existing devices. That alerts the abuser. The goal is to keep compromised devices operating normally while building a parallel secure channel they don't know about.

The Dual-Device Strategy

Keep your primary phone exactly as it is. Don't delete apps, change passwords, disable location sharing, or install new security tools. Any change to the phone's behavior pattern can trigger suspicion. Continue using it for normal daily communication — texts with friends, grocery lists, social media.

Set up a secure secondary device. Purchase a prepaid phone with cash from a store outside your normal area. Pay for the plan with cash. Keep it outside the shared home — a locked car, your workplace, a trusted friend's house. All communication with attorneys, domestic violence advocates, and your support network happens exclusively on this device.

The secure phone should:

• Use a PIN and biometric lock
• Connect only to secure Wi-Fi networks outside the home (for example, a trusted workplace or carefully chosen public network)
• Have a new email address created only on this device
• Never sync with any cloud account connected to your primary phone
• Never connect to your home Wi-Fi network (router logs record device connections)

Physical Tracker Sweep

AirTags, Tile trackers, and GPS devices have become common surveillance tools in domestic violence cases. They're small enough to hide in a purse lining, a jacket pocket, a car's wheel well, or tucked into a child's backpack.

Vehicle sweep:

• Check the wheel wells, under the bumpers, inside the glove box, under seats, and in the trunk — especially inside spare tire compartments
• Look behind license plate frames
• Check the OBD-II port (under the dashboard) — some GPS devices plug directly into this port and are powered by the vehicle
• If your car has built-in GPS or a connected vehicle system (OnStar, FordPass, Tesla app), assume the abuser can see your location through the vehicle's app if they have the account credentials

Personal items sweep:

• iPhone users: check Find My and the device's current unwanted-tracking alerts for unknown AirTags traveling with you
• Android users: use the device's current built-in unknown-tracker alerts or another current tracker-detection tool to identify nearby AirTags
• Check purses, backpacks, luggage, and jackets — feel along seams and linings for small hard objects
• Check children's backpacks and frequently carried items

Home devices:

• Smart home systems (Ring, Nest, Alexa) with shared accounts give the abuser real-time access to camera feeds, door sensors, and audio recordings
• Smart TVs can report viewing history through shared accounts
• Shared family plans for phone carriers may allow the account holder to see call logs, text metadata, or location data

Account Security Audit

Don't change these yet — just identify what's exposed:

• [ ] Which email accounts are logged in on shared devices?
• [ ] Is location sharing enabled on your phone? (Find My iPhone, Google Location Sharing, family sharing groups)
• [ ] Which cloud storage accounts sync across devices? (iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox)
• [ ] Are saved passwords accessible through a shared browser or password manager?
• [ ] Does the abuser have access to your email through saved sessions on their devices?
• [ ] Are financial accounts (banking apps, Venmo, PayPal) sending notifications to shared email addresses?

Write down the answers on paper or in a note on your secure device. After you've safely exited and have a protective order in place, you'll change passwords and revoke access to everything on this list — not before.

Photo and Camera Safety

Every photo taken on a smartphone can contain EXIF metadata — embedded GPS coordinates showing exactly where the photo was taken. If you post a photo to social media or send one through an app that preserves metadata, you're broadcasting your location.

• Turn off location access for your camera app
• Before sharing any photo, remove location metadata using your device's current sharing or metadata-removal controls; do not assume a messaging app strips it
• Be aware that photos taken at your safe location and stored in a shared cloud account reveal that location through their metadata

When to Lock Down

The full lockdown happens after you've physically separated and can safely make these changes. At that point:

• Change passwords on every account, starting with email (email is the master key — it controls password resets for everything else)
• Enable two-factor authentication using your secure phone number
• Remove the abuser from all shared accounts, family plans, and cloud services
• Deauthorize their devices from your accounts
• Contact your phone carrier to separate your line from any family plan
• Update security questions — the abuser knows your mother's maiden name and your first pet

The Leaving an Abusive Marriage Safely Guide includes a complete digital safety audit worksheet, a tracker sweep checklist, and a post-exit account lockdown sequence — designed to walk you through the technical steps without requiring any cybersecurity background.