Hacked, tracked and silenced: The mutating forms of digital abuse you need to know

A woman receives a text message from her ex-partner. It's threatening. Abusive. She takes a screenshot and rushes to the police station to report it. The officer asks her to do something counterintuitive: don't block him yet.

"But he's harassing me," she says.

"I know," the officer replies. "But we need him to stay active online so we can prove it was him."

This moment—the gap between what victims think will help them and what actually builds a case—reveals something crucial about digital violence in Kenya. Most of us don't understand it. We don't know where it happens, what forms it takes, or what to do when it strikes. And in a country where 38 per cent of women globally have personally experienced online abuse, according to a 2021 study by The Economist Intelligence Unit, that knowledge gap is dangerous.

What digital violence actually is

Digital violence is gender-based violence enabled by technology. It happens through social media, email, text messages, gaming platforms, and WhatsApp groups. It's harassment. It's stalking. It's hate speech dressed in pixels and sent across the internet at the click of a button.

But here's what makes it different from traditional abuse: it's everywhere, it's permanent, and it's often invisible to everyone except the person being targeted. Your neighbour might not see your ex-partner sending you threatening messages. Your family might not witness the strangers flooding your Instagram comments with sexual harassment. But the damage is just as real.

Where it happens—and why it matters

Digital violence thrives in two very different spaces, and understanding the difference matters enormously.

The platforms everyone knows about: X, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram — are where much of this violence is overt. Public. Visible. A woman's photo is shared without consent. Comments flood in, vicious and degrading. Thousands of strangers witness it. These are the attacks that happen in plain sight.

But there's another layer, one that's far more insidious.

The hidden spaces: WhatsApp groups, vernacular-language online communities, and gaming platforms—are where much of Kenya's digital violence actually happens. Here, in spaces that feel private and intimate, abuse unfolds away from public scrutiny. A group chat in a local language where a woman's image is shared without permission. A gaming platform where a young girl is groomed by someone she thinks is her age. These spaces feel safer because fewer people are watching. But that's precisely what makes them dangerous.

From old violence to new forms

Digital technology hasn't created gender-based violence. It's exacerbated it.

The violence that has always existed—sexual harassment, stalking, hate speech, misinformation, defamation, impersonation—now travels at the speed of internet connection. A rumour that once spread through whispers across a village now reaches thousands in seconds. A photo that would have been shown to a few people in confidence is now screenshotted and shared across multiple platforms before the victim even knows it's happened.

But technology has also created entirely new weapons.

Hacking is the act of exploiting weaknesses in computer systems to gain unauthorised access. An abuser breaks into your email, your phone, your accounts. They read your private messages. They see your location. They control what people see when they look for you online.

Astroturfing is the deceptive practice of creating a false impression that an orchestrated online campaign is a widespread, spontaneous public movement. Imagine a coordinated effort to discredit a gender-equality advocate by flooding her social media with fake accounts, all claiming she's a fraud. To observers, it looks like genuine public outcry. It's manufactured outrage weaponised against women.

Video and image-based abuse takes several forms. Deepfakes are manipulated or entirely artificially generated images, videos, or audio content—your face, your body, placed into scenarios you never agreed to. Doxxing is publicly exposing someone's private information—their home address, workplace, phone number—with the intent of inviting harassment or worse. Cyberbullying is the relentless sending, posting, or sharing of negative, harmful, false, or mean content, often coordinated across multiple people and platforms.

And then there's online grooming: an abuser uses technology to build a relationship with children, adolescents, young adults like job seekers, or vulnerable adults. They do so with a specific, sinister purpose: to trick, pressure, or force them into doing something sexual. This can happen through online chats, sexting, or by sending gifts or money to build trust. It's a slow, calculated assault on a person's autonomy and safety.

The real numbers—and what they mean

The violence is widespread. Studies on digital violence against men remain limited, but a 2024 study on digital violence in Kenya's higher learning institutions indicates that 35.5 per cent of male students have experienced at least one form of online violence.

For women, the picture is grimmer. The 2021 Economist Intelligence Unit study found that 38 per cent of women globally have experienced online abuse. But that's just the tip of the iceberg: 85 per cent have witnessed it happening to others.

In Kenya's universities, these statistics translate into real students—real lives disrupted.

What survivors of digital violence face is not merely embarrassment or hurt feelings. The impact is devastating. They experience isolation. They can't study or work. They lose income. They stop participating in regular activities. Their capacity to care for themselves and their children diminishes. Their physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health deteriorates.

Children exposed to digital violence face heightened risk of developing behavioural and emotional problems that can follow them into adulthood.

The trauma doesn't stay contained in the digital space. It bleeds into everything.

What you can do: Reporting and evidence

If you're experiencing digital violence, you don't have to be silent. And importantly, you don't have to be a victim to report—a friend, family member, or witness can report on someone else's behalf.

Where to report: Visit your local police station and make an official report. Or use the secure reporting channel: Fichua kwa DCI (0800 722 203). This number also works on WhatsApp, allowing survivors and third parties to send in information safely. There's also the Communications Authority's KE-CIRT app (Kenya Computer Incident Response Team), designed specifically for reporting technology-facilitated crimes.

How to collect evidence

Here's the counterintuitive part: don't block the abuser immediately. Blocking too quickly is one of the biggest obstacles to investigating digital violence. The DCI needs the abuser to remain active online so they can attribute the offence to them and build a case.

Instead, take screenshots of the chats, messages, or communications from the perpetrator. The screenshots should capture the time stamp, the pseudonym or name being used, and enough context to be clear what's happening. Save these. Screenshot the website, the platform, the evidence. You're building a trail that leads directly to the perpetrator.

Protecting yourself: Minimising your exposure

Prevention is harder than it sounds because the digital world is designed to extract information from us. But there are concrete steps.

Be cautious about what you post online. Every detail—your location, your routine, your relationships—leaves behind a digital footprint that can easily be weaponised. An abuser uses it to stalk you. A scammer uses it to con you. A predator uses it to target you.

Understand that intimate images shared in relationships, often shared innocently, can later be misused. That photo you sent to a partner in trust? If the relationship ends badly, it can become a tool of control, humiliation, or extortion. Assume that anything you share digitally could, one day, be used against you.

Check what permissions you're granting apps. Devices and apps track more information than you realise. When you install a new application, examine what permissions it's requesting. Does a photo-editing app really need access to your location? Does a game really need access to your contacts? Probably not.

Use strong, unique passwords. The most secure passwords are phrases or words crafted in vernacular languages—something only you would think of. Complement this with two-factor authentication, which requires a second form of verification before anyone can access your accounts.

Why this matters—even if it hasn't happened to you yet

You might be reading this thinking: this hasn't touched my life. Not yet. But the numbers don't lie. Digital violence is happening. It's systemic. It's widespread. And even if it hasn't reached you personally, it puts all of us at risk when we use digital devices.

Calling out digital violence, discouraging it, actively resisting it—these are not abstract moral stands. They're investments in the safety of our families and our communities.

Stop forwarding jokes, memes, or screenshots that violate someone's privacy. That is how we normalise abuse. When you laugh at someone's leaked image, you're telling the next predator that this is acceptable. When you share a screenshot without consent, you're teaching others that privacy is optional.

Trauma from digital violence doesn't just disappear if ignored. Counselling psychologists warn that unhealed trauma can be passed on—to partners, to children, to the next person a survivor meets. In a world where we're all connected, you never know if the next person you encounter is carrying that pain. And you could end up feeling its effects.

The choice, then, isn't whether digital violence affects you. It's whether you'll be part of the solution or part of the problem.

Source:Directorate of Criminal Investigations, Kenya ICT Action Network, UN Women, Collaborative Centre for Gender and Development and the University of Nairobi Women's Economic Empowerment.

Compiled by Moraa Obiria