This paper describes a qualitative study with 89 participants that details how abusers in intimate partner violence (IPV) contexts exploit technologies to intimidate, threaten, monitor, impersonate, harass, or otherwise harm their victims. We show that, at their core, many of the attacks in IPV contexts are technologically unsophisticated from the perspective of a security practitioner or researcher. For example, they are often carried out by a UI-bound adversary - an adversarial but authenticated user that interacts with a victim»s device or account via standard user interfaces - or by downloading and installing a ready-made application that enables spying on a victim. Nevertheless, we show how the sociotechnical and relational factors that characterize IPV make such attacks both extremely damaging to victims and challenging to counteract, in part because they undermine the predominant threat models under which systems have been designed. We discuss the nature of these new IPV threat models and outline opportunities for HCI research and design to mitigate these attacks.

Survivors of intimate partner violence increasingly report that abusers install spyware on devices to track their location, monitor communications, and cause emotional and physical harm. To date there has been only cursory investigation into the spyware used in such intimate partner surveillance (IPS). We provide the first in-depth study of the IPS spyware ecosystem. We design, implement, and evaluate a measurement pipeline that combines web and app store crawling with machine learning to find and label apps that are potentially dangerous in IPS contexts. Ultimately we identify several hundred such IPS-relevant apps. While we find dozens of overt spyware tools, the majority are "dual-use" apps - they have a legitimate purpose (e.g., child safety or anti-theft), but are easily and effectively repurposed for spying on a partner. We document that a wealth of online resources are available to educate abusers about exploiting apps for IPS. We also show how some dual-use app developers are encouraging their use in IPS via advertisements, blogs, and customer support services. We analyze existing anti-virus and anti-spyware tools, which universally fail to identify dual-use apps as a threat.

Digital technologies, including mobile devices, cloud computing services, and social networks, play a nuanced role in intimate partner violence (IPV) settings, including domestic abuse, stalking, and surveillance of victims by abusive partners. However, the interactions among victims of IPV, abusers, law enforcement, counselors, and others --- and the roles that digital technologies play in these interactions --- are poorly understood. We present a qualitative study that analyzes the role of digital technologies in the IPV ecosystem in New York City. Findings from semi-structured interviews with 40 IPV professionals and nine focus groups with 32 survivors of IPV reveal a complex set of socio-technical challenges that stem from the intimate nature of the relationships involved and the complexities of managing shared social circles. Both IPV professionals and survivors feel that they do not possess adequate expertise to be able to identify or cope with technology-enabled IPV, and there are currently insufficient best practices to help them deal with abuse via technology. We also reveal a number of tensions and trade-offs in negotiating technology's role in social support and legal procedures. Taken together, our findings contribute a nuanced understanding of technology's role in the IPV ecosystem and yield recommendations for HCI and technology experts interested in aiding victims of abuse.