What’s worth protecting?

Think: your devices, your messages, your money, your location—even your identity. If it can be seen, stolen, or sabotaged, it goes here.

What exactly is at stake in a case of technology-facilitated abuse?

Not just your devices, and certainly not just your passwords. The assets at risk here are the many pieces of your digital life—the ones you use every day, and the ones you forget exist until they’re used against you.

When someone gains access, they don’t just see information. They gain control. Of where you go, who you speak to, and how safe you feel doing either.

Let’s break it down.

Devices

Phones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches, and all those helpful little gadgets now labelled “smart”: TVs, speakers, doorbells, even light bulbs. If it runs on electricity and has a connection to anything else, it’s a potential surveillance tool.

Devices that were:

  • Given as gifts (“I just wanted you to have something nice”)
  • Set up ‘to help’ (“Don’t worry, I’ll configure it for you”)
  • Left behind (“It’s old, but still works. Might as well keep using it”)

…are especially vulnerable. Many of these are preloaded with apps or settings designed to “check in,” “monitor,” or “keep track”—features that quickly stop feeling benign.

Smart home gear deserves special mention. Your thermostat doesn’t just know the temperature. It knows when you’re in. Your smart kettle knows when you wake up. None of this is obviously threatening—until someone else can see it too.

Accounts

We live in account land. Email, banking, social media, shopping, calendars, cloud storage, health apps, energy bills, streaming services—you name it, it probably requires a login.

Some accounts matter more than others:

  • Email: the master key. If someone has access to your inbox, they can reset nearly everything else.
  • Banking & finance apps: not just for stealing money—also used for watching spending, blocking access, or making you financially dependent.
  • Cloud storage: where photos, notes, and documents live, often quietly syncing across devices.
  • Social media: can be used for surveillance, impersonation, or isolation.

Often, these accounts were created together, or you were encouraged to “share everything” early on. Later, access becomes a trap: hard to change, harder to revoke, and often tied to shared identities like “family plans” or joint subscriptions.

Data

It’s not just what you say or do—it’s what your devices remember.

This includes:

  • Text messages, chat logs, emails
  • Photos and videos
  • Call history
  • Location data and journey logs
  • Browsing history and saved bookmarks
  • Health and fitness data (step counts, sleep, cycle tracking)
  • Notes, reminders, and to-do lists
  • Calendar entries, including who you’re meeting and when

Taken alone, a photo or calendar entry might seem harmless. Taken together, they build a pattern. That’s what abusers use—not just to watch, but to predict and manipulate.

And yes, even your “recently closed tabs” or autocorrect suggestions can leak more than you’d think.

Identity

Your digital identity isn’t just a username and a profile picture. It’s the whole infrastructure around who you are online—and sometimes offline too.

Risk areas include:

  • Email addresses and usernames
  • Phone numbers and SIM registrations
  • Facial recognition and fingerprint scans (used for unlocking or logging in)
  • Saved passwords and two-factor tokens
  • Voice profiles (used by smart assistants or call systems)
  • Old backups and synced settings

If someone gains access to these, they can pretend to be you. Not just in conversation, but in systems: logging in as you, buying things as you, making decisions as you.

And worse: even after you leave, even after you wipe a device, remnants of your identity can linger in places like backup files or linked third-party services. Which means they might still have access—even if you think you’ve moved on.

Digital exhaust

This is the trail you leave behind without meaning to. Not the contents of a message, but the metadata—the digital equivalent of footprints in the snow.

Examples include:

  • Who you called, when, and for how long
  • Where your phone connected to Wi-Fi or mobile towers
  • Which apps you opened and when
  • Location patterns (“you’re always at this café on Tuesdays”)
  • Device usage logs from smart home devices

Each of these fragments, by themselves, might feel insignificant. But when someone with intent puts them together? They become a powerful map of your routines.

Abusers can use this to anticipate your movements, intercept your support systems, or quietly manipulate circumstances in ways that are difficult to trace or explain.

A word on this section

You’re not at fault for having a digital life. The problem isn’t the tech—it’s how it’s used against you.

Recognising what’s at risk isn’t meant to make you paranoid. It’s meant to give you agency. These assets belong to you. And the more you understand them, the more you can begin to protect them on your own terms.

Because control, once taken away, can be taken back.