Responding to Survivors
Keep a Log of all Incidents
Encourage survivors to keep a log of all incidents - even if they are not sure if they want to involve the police or courts.
They can log these incidents in a notebook or using a digital abuse log such as the one below. Encourage the survivor to review the sample tech abuse log to understand what information to collect.
Take Screenshots and/or Screen Recordings
A screenshot is an image that your device captures of its own screen. A screen recording is similar to a screenshot, except that it is a video instead of an image. This can be especially helpful if they are trying to document something that doesn’t fit on your screen.
Survivors can also take photos or videos of their device from a second safe device. This is an especially good option if you need to document evidence from apps that may notify the other person if you took a screenshot or screen recording.
Note: Some messaging apps notify the other person if someone takes a screenshot of the conversation. Features and settings change frequently. To find out whether an app notifies the other person, encourage survivors to test with a friend or verify online.
Device-Specific Recommendations
Email: Emails contain IP addresses and other information that may help identify the sender. Because of that, it is important to not delete any abusive emails. A forwarded email will not have the same information, so forwarding to someone else is not enough. If saving email content by printing or taking screenshots, be sure to save the email header.
Text Messages: Wireless carriers only keep text messages for a limited time. If the survivor is working with law enforcement, ensure they send a preservation letter to the phone company as soon as possible, so the phone company knows not to destroy the data. Some text messages stored on a phone may be inadvertently deleted, so encourage the survivor to take a screenshot or picture of the text message to retain the evidence.
Social Media: Some applications offer methods to document personal activity. For example, Facebook has a “Download your Information” feature with a Specific Types of Information setting. This feature allows a user to save logs of how their account has been used and which devices were used. This could be used as documentation that someone else was using their account.
Audio Recordings: You can encourage victim-survivors to record their phone conversations to keep evidence of harassing or threatening calls. India allows you to record a conversation if you are a participant, but recording a conversation between two other people is illegal under the Indian Telegraph Act 1885. A call recording can be used as evidence in court, provided it is authentic and relevant to the case. It must comply with evidentiary requirements under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, including proper authentication and certification.