Abuse Using Technology

Any evidence can be documented so that you can access it later. For purposes of this section, documenting your evidence means that you are taking steps to:

• keep (preserve) evidence of abuse; or
• accurately record incidents of abuse as they happen, by writing the incidents in a log, for example.

Part of documenting technological evidence means that you are not changing the evidence at all – so, for example, if the abuser sends a threatening email that is unsigned, you cannot add his/her name to the email just because you know that s/he wrote it. You also want to document your evidence in a format that contains the most reliable information for the judge or law enforcement to consider. This means documenting the phone number, email address, username, or other account information associated with the evidence. For instance, if you wanted to document a text message from your employer who is saved under your phone contacts as “Boss,” you would want to save the text message with your boss’s phone number displayed instead of “Boss.” You would also want to display the date and time stamps to show when the message was received. If you do not know how to find the sender information or date and time stamps for your messages on your device or account, a simple Internet search can help.