The internet can be a useful for finding information on domestic violence and with a few helpful hints you can increase your safety.

You can find lots of information online but its important to determine which website provide useful, relevant and reliable information. Different states have different legislation in regard to domestic violence so when searching for information try to stay state specific. Legislation changes so its helpful to ask a domestic violence support worker, community legal service or solicitor for clarification before making any decisions.

If you need to hide your computer use from the abuser it might be safer to use a computer which they don’t have access to. For example instead of using your home computer you could use a neighbours, a friends, the local library, internet cafes, or use the free internet at Tweed Shire Women’s Service.

If you receive threatening, unwanted or abusive emails from your abuser you may like to keep a copy of them as evidence which you could use if applying for an ADVO or as evidence for Police. If you are distressed by the emails you may wish to set up a new email account.

Be careful using a email account you have through your internet provider (eg bigpond or optus). If you use this email address to send emails you’d prefer nobody else has access to remember to delete all emails both in the “sent” box and then the “deleted” box. Even if you delete emails this way a person efficient with computers may be able to recover copies of your emails from your internet provider.

You may like to set up a private email address. Free email addresses can be obtained through hotmail and yahoo. These email accounts may increase your safety and also allows you to access your emails from any computer that has internet access.

These private emails are easy to set up and can be used to storage a large number of emails. To access these free emails you can log on to www.hotmail.com or www.yahoo.com and click on “sign up” and follow the prompts. If you are unsure how to set up these accounts you can get help from Tweed Shire Women’s Service, the librarian and your local library, a counsellor or support worker.

The emails require the use of passwords to access the account for added security. Make sure the password you choose isn’t easy to guess. When you sign in make sure the box which asks to “remember my id or password on this computer” is not ticked.

Remember when accessing these emails to always “sign out” at the top of the screen

The main safety concern that you may face when you surf the net is that all “browsers” stores information about the websites that have been accessed. The easiest way to protect yourself is to use a computer you are safe accessing such as a friends, at a internet café, local library or Tweed Shire Women’s Service.

If you do need to use your home computer you should use a different browser. Most computers use the browser Internet Explorer to access the internet.

You can download free browsers such Mozilla or Netscape. You will have to keep all information related to the new browser in a hidden folder somewhere in your computer. You will need to access the hidden folder to open the new browser. Ensure that any shortcuts for the browser on the computers desktop are removed. Erasing your tracks will be different for each browser you use. To ensure you have erased your tracks correctly you need to know how your tracks are recorded.

There are three different places on your computer that where information about your activity is recorded which are:

1. Browsers Cache. Copies of every page you visit are stored in a ‘cache’ on your hard drive. If you use internet explorer as your browser this cache is store in a folder called Temporary Internet File ­ which can be deleted. Cache is used to increase the speed of your internet viewing so removing cache can have an impact on the speed of your internet. Removing the cache will also remove ‘cookies’ therefore things like log-in passwords which the computer may have remembered in the past will be removed. This may be noticeable to other people using the computer

2. Browsers History. When you do a search on programs like google or yahoo it will develop a list of web pages. Web pages that have been already been accessed by your computer will be a different colour (often purple) to those that haven’t been visits (normally blue). Deleting your records will mean that you won’t be able to distinguish between sites you have accessed and sites you haven’t. This may noticeable to other people using the computer.

3. Browsers typed URLS. If you have manually typed a web address it is added to the drop down list on the location bar. Removing your records will mean that the websites listed in the drop down list will be removed. This may be noticeable to other people using the computer.

All of these records can be deleted but there are different ways to do this for different browsers. For more detailed information on your browser click on the appropriate link below.

Internet Explorer

Mozilla

Remember to delete these records often.