Informing and Empowering Domestic Violence Survivors

January marks Stalking Awareness Month – a time to raise awareness and educate communities about the serious crime of stalking. One in three women and one in six men experience stalking at some point in their lifetimes, with approximately 13.5 million people experiencing stalking each year in the United States alone. The most common stalking tactics experienced by victims include technology, through unwanted phone calls, texts, emails and messages. 

Stalkerware, monitoring software that is used to discreetly track someone’s device and activities without them knowing, is part of technology-facilitated abuse. The use of stalkerware and tech-abuse are escalating across the globe through tactics like incessant texting or calling, financial abuse, surveillance, tracking devices and spyware that harms and intimidates partners. Like any form of domestic violence, this can lead to severe and lasting physical and mental trauma. 

Technology can also have a positive impact in the lives of survivors. Survivors can access help and essential tools to maintain their safety and privacy while remaining connected to family and friends. Our long-term partnership with the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) is focused on this. NNEDV offers programs and initiatives that address the complex causes and far-reaching consequences of domestic violence. It also offers information and resources to victims of domestic violence — and empowers survivors as they build new lives. Most recently, we provided $100,000 grants to support NNEDV’s work in 2023, 2024 and 2025. 

Our Efforts to Help End Tech-Abuse

Over the last two years, we’ve successfully developed accessible tools and resources and created opportunities for outreach and education about tech safety, to help survivors and advocates address tech-abuse. Below are a few key highlights from our efforts so far. 

• The Securing Devices and Accounts Guide, a privacy- and security-focused resource, addresses survivors’ common concerns about devices and accounts. In less than a year, the guide was viewed more than 8,000 times.  
• The Financial Abuse and Technology Guide and infographic helps survivors recognize and understand financial tech abuse. It includes 10 crucial tips to safeguard financial information online. 
• Through an innovative collaboration with NNEDV, the Safe Shelter Collaborative and TechSoup, one of our trusted Cyber Safety brands, Norton, has provided free product licenses (Norton 360 Deluxe and Norton Secure VPN) to help survivors recover from financial or technological abuse.  
• With our support, NNEDV’s Safety Net team held its 12th annual three-day Technology Summit, focused on the intersection of technology and domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and trafficking.  

• Avast, another of our trusted Cyber Safety brands, offers Avast One, free software that keeps people private and secure online, with antivirus, VPN and firewall, as well as clean-up, speed-up and privacy tools. 
• Norton, Avast, and Avira are proud members of the Coalition Against Stalkerware, which works to keep malicious technology, like stalkerware, out of the hands of abusers. 

Expanding Our Reach 

In 2025, we’re working withNNEDV to make these resources even more widely accessible and digestible. This will include videos focused on financial abuse and technology and about securing devices and accounts. We are more focused than ever on making sure these important resources get into the hands of the people who need them most. 

For more information and to access and share resources, visit [placeholder] Avast’s Stalkerware Quick Check to make sure you’re starting the year off stalkerware free, NNEDV’s Safety Net Project and SPARC’s National Stalking Awareness Month site. 

These grants were awarded from the Gen Foundation, a corporate advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.