When most people think about cybersecurity, they imagine hackers — faceless figures probing bank accounts or corporate servers from across the globe. For years, that model has shaped how we design digital defenses. But the reality I’ve encountered in my research is far more intimate, and far more unsettling. Increasingly, the threat is not a stranger. It is someone you know.

Cyberstalking, particularly in the context of intimate partner violence, forces us to rethink the very foundations of cybersecurity, not as a technical problem, but a deeply personal one.

I study what I call “abusive adversaries” — people who use technology to control, monitor or harm someone with whom they share a personal relationship. This flips many of the assumptions that traditional cybersecurity relies on. In most models, attackers are external, financially motivated and limited by access. In cases of cyberstalking, none of those assumptions hold. The adversary may share a home, know passwords, own the devices or have legitimate access to accounts. Their motivations are rarely financial. Instead, they are social, emotional and deeply personal — tracking a partner’s location, monitoring their communications or undermining their independence.

That shift in perspective changes a lot. It means that securing systems is not just about keeping intruders out. It is about recognizing how existing technologies can be quietly repurposed for harm.

Early in my work, I examined commercially available spyware, expecting to find widespread use in abusive relationships. Instead, what emerged was something both simpler and more pervasive: people were not relying on sophisticated tools. They were using everyday technologies.

Devices and platforms designed for convenience — location trackers, shared calendars, cloud accounts — can easily become tools of surveillance. A shared calendar can reveal someone’s movements and social interactions. A logged-in device can provide ongoing access to emails and messages. Even small tracking devices, originally designed to help locate lost items, can be used to follow someone without their knowledge.

This is the uncomfortable truth at the heart of cyberstalking: the problem is not always malicious software. It is the dual- use nature of ordinary technology, which makes stopping it more difficult.

One approach is to redesign systems with abuse in mind. In recent years, researchers and advocates have worked with technology companies to introduce safeguards — alerts when unknown tracking devices move with you, clearer visibility into which devices are connected to your accounts, stronger authentication systems. These changes are incremental, but they matter. They make covert surveillance harder to sustain.

But technical fixes alone are not enough. To address cyberstalking effectively, we need to understand the people behind it. Much of my research involves identifying where and how abusive behaviors are discussed online. This is not straightforward. Abuse is stigmatized, and people rarely admit to it openly. Instead, conversations often emerge in spaces organized around emotionally charged topics — suspicions of infidelity, for instance — where invasive behavior is framed as justified or even necessary. In these contexts, the line between concern and control becomes blurred.

Finding these communities raises difficult ethical questions. If researchers identify spaces where harmful behaviors are being encouraged, should they report them and risk dispersing those conversations into less visible corners of the internet? Or should they monitor them to better understand emerging threats? There is no easy answer. Each choice involves trade- offs between disruption and insight.

What becomes clear, however, is that cyberstalking cannot be addressed without grappling with its social dimensions. These are not purely technical exploits. They are expressions of power, control and coercion, mediated through technology.

This is why I see my work as part of a broader shift within cybersecurity — one that intersects with human-computer interaction, sociology and public policy. We cannot design safer systems without understanding the contexts in which they are used, and misused. We cannot protect people if we only focus on abstract threats while ignoring lived experiences.

That interdisciplinary perspective is especially important as cyberstalking evolves. Today, I am increasingly focused on how digital abuse extends beyond surveillance into economic control. Survivors of intimate partner violence often face financial manipulation — coerced debt, employment sabotage or interference with online businesses. As more livelihoods move online, new vulnerabilities emerge. An abusive partner may exploit e-commerce platforms, impersonate customers or manipulate account access to disrupt someone’s income.

These are not edge cases. They are indicators of how deeply technology is embedded in everyday life — and how easily it can be turned against us.

Addressing this requires collaboration across fields. Computer scientists can identify vulnerabilities and design safeguards, but legal scholars, advocates and policymakers are essential for creating protections that extend beyond the interface. Recent legislative efforts around coerced debt, for example, highlight how technical understanding can inform policy, ensuring that financial systems recognize and respond to abuse.

If there is one lesson I have learned, it is that cyberstalking is not a problem we can “solve” in the traditional sense. Technology will continue to evolve, and so will the ways it is used. But we can make systems more resilient. We can make abuse more visible. And we can design with the recognition that harm does not always come from outside the system, but often from within it