Paying the Price: When Intimate Partners Use Technology for Financial Harm

Abstract

Financial abuse — the control of a survivor’s access to and use of financial resources — is highly prevalent in intimate partner violence (IPV) cases. Based on the reports of 158 survivors of IPV and 16 financial advocates, we present a comprehensive investigation into how abusers exploit technologies to harm survivors financially through various technical attacks and deceptive strategies. In doing so, we identify four motivations for abusers who use these harmful attacks and how these acts exploit, monitor, restrict, and sabotage a survivor’s financial well-being and independence. As each dimension of these financial harms warrants a tailored approach, we highlight potential directions for practice and research to protect survivors from technology-enabled financial harms. Broadly, we call for the financial technology sector to consider designing for intimate threats through adversarial thinking, recommend strategies for detecting financially abusive activity and provide guidance for how customer service agents may be financially abuse aware.

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