A/HRC/38/47 across distance, without physical contact and beyond borders through the use of anonymous profiles to amplify the harm to victims. All forms of online gender-based violence are used to control and attack women and to maintain and reinforce patriarchal norms, roles and structures and an unequal power relationship. This is particularly evident when violence, threats and harassment follow speeches or expression related to gender equality and feminism, or where defenders of women’s rights are targeted for their work. 31. ICT may be used directly as a tool for making digital threats and inciting genderbased violence, including threats of physical and/or sexual violence, rape, killing, unwanted and harassing online communications, or even the encouragement of others to harm women physically. It may also involve the dissemination of reputation-harming lies, electronic sabotage in the form of spam and malignant viruses, impersonation of the victim online and the sending of abusive emails or spam, blog posts, tweets or other online communications in the victim’s name. ICT-facilitated violence against women may also be committed in the work place25 or in the form of so-called “honour-based” violence or of domestic violence by intimate partners. Women who speak out about their abuse online are frequently and increasingly threatened with legal proceedings, such as for defamation, which aims to prevent them from reporting their situation. Such behaviour may form part of a pattern of domestic violence and abuse. 32. ICT tools are also used for trafficking in women and girls, or as a threat to compel them into trafficking situations. Abusers may threaten the disclosure of private information online to maintain power and control over their victims to prevent them from leaving the relationship and/or from reporting abuse and pursuing their legal rights in court. 33. There are many new emerging forms of violence against women with ICT-related names, such as “doxing”, “sextortion” and “trolling”. Some forms of violence against women carry the prefix “online”, such as online mobbing, online stalking and online harassment. New forms of violence have also developed, such as the non-consensual distribution of intimate contents (“revenge porn”). 34. Online violence against women may be manifested in different forms and through different means, such as non-consensual accessing, using, manipulating, disseminating or sharing of private data, information and/or content, photographs and/or videos, including sexualized images, audio clips and/or video clips or Photoshopped images. 35. “Sextortion” refers to the use of ICT to blackmail a victim. In such cases, the perpetrator threatens to release intimate pictures of the victim in order to extort additional explicit photos, videos, sexual acts or sex from the victim. 36. “Doxing” refers to the publication of private information, such as contact details, on the Internet with malicious intent, usually with the insinuation that the victim is soliciting sex (researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual without consent, sometimes with the intention of exposing the woman to the “real” world for harassment and/or other purposes). It includes situations where personal information and data retrieved by a perpetrator is made public with malicious intent, clearly violating the right to privacy. 37. “Trolling” consists in the posting of messages, the uploading of images or videos and the creation of hashtags for the purpose of annoying, provoking or inciting violence against women and girls. Many “trolls” are anonymous and use false accounts to generate hate speech.26 38. Online mobbing and harassment refer to the online equivalents of mobbing or harassment on social platforms, the Internet, in chat rooms, instant messaging and mobile communications. 25 26 See International Labour Office, “Ending violence and harassment against women and men in the world of work”, International Labour Conference, 107th session, 2018. Instituto de las Mujeres del Distrito Federal, Programa Annual PAIMEF 2016: “CDMX Ciudad Segura y Amigable para las Mujeres y las Niñas”, p. 20. 9