Social media can feel like a great way to stay connected, but it also poses its own risks. Taking some precautions when using your social media can ensure you can enjoy the connection with friends, family and community, while still feeling safe.

If your profile is public, or if you interact significantly on public pages, then your partner/ex-partner could use your posts, photos and interactions with others as a way to track your movements. Blocking the person may not be enough if you still have other mutual connections.

To help maintain safety be wary of what you post, including who is in photos or what can be seen in the background, and ensure that location services is off (managed through general settings). Increase your safety and privacy settings on apps to ensure only those people who you want can see your profile; be sure to recheck these settings often as app and phone updates can sometimes change settings back to default.

Whenever you visit a webpage, or run an internet search, your movements and visits are logged in your browser history, this includes pages you clicked through on the website and how long you stayed.

If a perpetrator, or their contact, has access to your computer, phone or tablet it is easy for them to access you browser history.

Clearing your history, and deleting cached data, is the easiest solution, however can be a flag to a perpetrator that you have started trying to hide your movements. Single entries can be deleted from history, however the safest option is to open a browser window in incognito mode, or even better, use a safe computer like a library, work or a friends.

In Chrome you can open an incognito window by right clicking on your Chrome icon and selecting “open new incognito window”. From an existing browser page you can select the three dots in the top right hand corner and select the same. Similar can be done in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and other browsers.

To clear your browsing history use one of the guides below, or search for one specific to your browser.

Clear your Google Chrome history

Clear your Internet Explorer history

Clear your Mozilla Firefox history

Clear your Safari (Apple) history

If your partner/ex-partner has access to your email account, they may be able to read your incoming and outgoing mail.

If you believe your account is secure, make sure you choose a password that they will not be able to guess, and change it often. If you believe your email is already compromised, and that changing the password may increase risk to yourself, then set up a secondary email which you keep private.

If your partner/ex-partner sends you threatening or harassing E-mail messages (or direct messages, or texts), they may be printed or downloaded and saved elsewhere incase you need them to support a protection order application down the track.