A Taxonomy-Driven Case Study of Australian Web Resources Against Technology-Facilitated Abuse

TL;DR

Technology-Facilitated Abuse (TFA) lacks a unified taxonomy linking abuse types, prevention, detection, and support. To address this, the paper derives four interrelated taxonomies from a literature review and applies them in a large-scale Australian web audit, crawling 306 domains and 52,605 pages with hierarchical zero-shot classification and emotion/readability analyses. The findings reveal heavy emphasis on harassment, comments abuse, and sexual abuse, while covert surveillance, privacy violations, and economic abuse are underrepresented; prevention and detection resources skew toward legal and clinical framing with few technology-based safeguards, and support content is dominated by digital information hubs rather than direct services. The taxonomy and audit framework offer a scalable basis for evaluating institutional communication, guiding survivor resources, and informing safer digital ecosystems across national contexts.

Abstract

Technology-Facilitated Abuse (TFA) encompasses a broad and rapidly evolving set of behaviours in which digital systems are used to harass, monitor, threaten, or control individuals. Although prior research has documented many forms of TFA, there is no consolidated framework for understanding how abuse types, prevention measures, detection mechanisms, and support pathways relate across the abuse life cycle. This paper contributes a unified, literature-derived taxonomy of TFA grounded in a structured review of peer-reviewed studies, and the first large-scale, taxonomy-aligned audit of institutional web resources in Australia. We crawl 306 government, non-government, and service-provider domains, obtaining 52,605 pages, and classify using zero-shot topic models to map web content onto our taxonomy. An emotion and readability analyses reveal how institutions frame TFA and how accessible their guidance is to the public. Our findings show that institutional websites cover only a narrow subset of harms emphasised in the literature, with approximately 70% of all abuse labelled pages focused on harassment, comments abuse, or sexual abuse, while less than 1% address covert surveillance, economic abuse, or long-term controlling behaviours. Support pathways are similarly limited, with most resources centred on digital information hubs rather than counselling or community-based services. Readability analysis further shows that much of this content is written at late secondary or early tertiary reading levels, which may be inaccessible to a substantial portion of at-risk users. By highlighting strengths and gaps in Australia's support for TFA, our taxonomy and audit method provide a scalable basis for evaluating institutional communication, improving survivor resources, and guiding safer digital ecosystems. The taxonomy serves as a foundation for analyses in national contexts to foster TFA awareness.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Taxonomy of technology facilitated abuse types.
• Figure 2: Taxonomy of technology facilitated abuse prevention strategies.
• Figure 3: Taxonomy of technology-facilitated abuse detection mechanisms.
• Figure 4: Taxonomy of technology-facilitated abuse support measures.