Abusers have embraced new technology. UK policy hasn’t

Tech-facilitated abuse is a national emergency in the UK. Almost every case of domestic abuse involves the weaponisation of technology. Perpetrators misuse everything from AirTags to online banking apps to further exert coercive control.

That’s why it was disappointing that Keir Starmer’s government fell short of proposing a coordinated national plan to tackle this kind of abuse in its landmark Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, which was published last year to pave the way to achieving Labour’s manifesto pledge of halving VAWG by 2034.

The strategy’s promotion of holistic change – set out via policy and funding commitments from across government departments – is a welcome step forward. It proposes a ban on nudification apps, which are used to create intimate images of women and girls without consent, a commitment to explore ways to ensure the timely removal of non-consensual intimate images from online spaces, and places a much-needed emphasis on educating young people about relationships and tackling early signs of misogyny in schools, backed by a dedicated £20m innovation fund.

But now, with Andy Burnham expected to take over as prime minister in the coming weeks, it is clear his government must go further to protect women and girls. 

We at Refuge, the UK’s largest domestic abuse charity, are on the frontline of this emergency. Specialist services such as ours play a vital role in providing survivors with the lifesaving support they need to secure their technology and rebuild their lives free from fear. But prolonged underfunding has left us stretched to our limits – even as cases of abuse continue to grow and become more complex. 

Last year alone, our dedicated tech-facilitated abuse and economic empowerment team saw a 62% increase in referrals. In January, we warned of the growing weaponisation of AI and wearable technology by perpetrators, including covert filming on smart glasses and tracking victims through cloud accounts linked to smart watches, as the frontier of this crisis continues to evolve. Around the same time, the intersection of AI and VAWG made headlines when X’s chatbot Grok was used to generate intimate image deepfakes of hundreds of women without their consent.

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Intimate image abuse is an increasingly prevalent form of harm that often takes place not in isolation, but in the context of domestic abuse. 

Last year, Refuge raised the alarm about the use of ‘spycam’ devices – sophisticated cameras designed to look like ordinary household features, such as screws or part of a painting – to covertly film survivors. This sinister form of abuse is deeply violating and has real-world consequences for the safety of women and girls,  with survivors often telling us that it directly feeds into other abusive behaviours, such as blackmail or controlling who they can see, as well as causing severe emotional harm and long-term trauma.  

We’re also seeing an array of emerging forms of misogynistic image abuse online, including so-called ‘semen’ images, which were criminalised in February after awareness-raising by media and survivors. 

The fast-paced evolution of abuse in the digital age highlights the urgent need for a dynamic and proactive policy response to prevent emerging harms. But this alone is not enough; we also need government intervention to ensure that practice keeps pace with policy. 

In 2021, after Refuge’s successful ‘Naked Threat’ campaign, the Domestic Abuse Act made it illegal to threaten to share intimate images. Five years on, reports of intimate image abuse and the ‘threat to share’ have risen, but the number of people charged over such offences remains woefully low, according to data we obtained from 27 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales. (Sixteen forces did not respond to our Freedom of Information requests.)  

These findings are consistent with what many women have told us about problematic responses from the police when they make reports, including victim-blaming and dismissive language. In some cases, officers have told survivors that they ‘should not have shared the images in the first place’ – a fundamental misunderstanding of how intimate images may have been obtained non-consensually, as well as that consensual sharing at one point does not equate to ongoing consent. 

Officers can also be slow or reluctant to obtain evidence directly from perpetrators’ devices. Police forces must be adequately resourced and equipped to investigate technology-facilitated crime and secure digital evidence in a timely and effective manner. This must include trauma-informed, mandatory training for professionals across the criminal justice system to guarantee that survivors are treated with the support they deserve at every step of the way through the criminal justice process.

Every minute that non-consensual intimate image (NCII) abuse material is left online, it causes harm. While the government’s requirement for tech firms to remove NCII within 48 hours of it being reported is a step in the right direction, it must go further. Tech platforms must be proactive, acting before such images circulate to safeguard survivors, reduce repeated trauma, and break the cycle of abuse. 

Ofcom, the UK’s online safety watchdog, recently recommended tech firms use hash-matching technology, a digital technique that can detect illicit content and block it from being uploaded, to reduce the spread of NCII. The government must now properly back the regulator to robustly and swiftly enforce this measure and others, including the investigation of social media platforms and their senior executives – monitoring tech companies will be critical to holding them to account, protecting survivors and securing meaningful change.

But we also need stronger regulation to hold tech companies accountable for proactively testing product safety to prevent abuse, with developments informed by insights from survivors and specialist services such as Refuge, which was last month part of a coalition that launched a new Safety by Design Code of Practice. The paper seeks to define and embed safety-by-design principles within the Online Safety Act, with clear practical steps services can take to protect their users from the outset.

More generally, regulation must keep pace with emerging harms, such as AI chatbots, which can intensify abuse and educate perpetrators – including through simulations of abuse. What’s most critical is that harms aren’t treated in isolation. Instead, we need to see responses that recognise how fundamental platform design choices and governance are actively enabling VAWG.

Policy and regulation remain stuck in a reactive cycle, attempting to catch up with harms only after they have become widespread. That is not sustainable. Until the government accepts that technology-facilitated abuse is a national emergency and requires tech firms to act, women and girls will continue to bear the cost of a digital world that was never designed with their safety in mind.