no longer than is required for that purpose. Individuals have a right to access, to rectify or to
erase their personal data.241
Examples of impacts on women:
• Contact tracing and tracking via apps may be inaccessible to specific groups of women, such as older women, women living in poverty or women in rural areas, who have
less access to digital technologies. When mobile technologies are the primary methods
of collecting data and sharing information but do not take the gender digital divide into
consideration, women are less likely to benefit from case tracking. The result may be
that women could be unaware of potential exposure, and may have to isolate for longer
periods of time, even if they are not at risk, or that they will not be able to access crucial
health-related or emergency information.
• Cyber violence pre-dates the COVID-19 pandemic, and women and girls are disproportionately the victims of technology-facilitated stalking, online sexism, harassment and
non-consensual pornography (according to one estimate, one in ten women in Europe
has experienced a form of cyber violence since the age of 15).242 Online violence is often a
manifestation of intimate partner violence (e.g., in cases of “revenge porn” or stalking). The
emergency measures that have been taken to address the pandemic resulted in a large
number of people working and studying in the digital sphere, which has exposed women
and girls to a greater risk of cyber violence in varied forms.243 During lockdowns, survivors
of domestic violence are more reliant on technologies than ever before, and perpetrators
have exploited these circumstances to coerce or control them (for instance, by recording
remote court hearings244 and using spyware/stalkerware to track potential victims and
access their personal data).245 Contract-tracing technologies could potentially be abused
and present specific dangers to women of stalking and harassment if data are not properly
safeguarded and the right to privacy maintained.
241 For example, the OSCE Moscow Document, see: OSCE, Moscow Document, op. cit., note 23; and the Council of
Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, see: Council
of Europe, “Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data”, 28
January 1981, <https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/108>.
242 EIGE, “Cyber Violence against Women and Girls”, 23 June 2017, p. 1, <https://eige.europa.eu/publications/
cyber-violence-against-women-and-girls>.
243 Reuters, “Risk of Online Sex Trolling Rises as Coronavirus Prompts Home Working”, 18 March 2020, <https://www.
reuters.com/article/us-women-rights-cyberflashing-trfn-idUSKBN2153HG>.
244 Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, “Remote Hearings in the Family Justice System: A Rapid Consultation”,
2020, <https://www.nuffieldfjo.org.uk/app/nuffield/files-module/local/documents/nfjo_remote_hearings_20200507-2-.pdf>.
245 Computer Weekly, “Use of Spyware Apps Linked to Domestic Abuse Soars in
Lockdown”, 8 July 2020, <https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252485842/
Use-of-spyware-apps-linked-to-domestic-abuse-soars-in-lockdown>.
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