Scottish authorities report a surge in digital stalking, with abusers exploiting apps, connected devices, and online platforms to monitor and control victims, redefining safety measures and legal challenges.
Scotland’s stalking problem is now as much about passwords, apps and connected devices as it is about physical following, with police and support charities warning that abusers are extending control through technology built into ordinary domestic life. Officials and frontline workers say the shift is allowing perpetrators to monitor former partners remotely, sometimes long after a relationship has ended, by exploiting access to phones, household accounts and internet-linked products that continue to function normally while gathering information.
The scale of that digital element is now visible in official data. Scottish Government estimates for 2025-26 say 480 stalking offences and 520 offences under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act were cyber-crimes. That amounted to 47% of stalking cases and 16% of crimes recorded under the 2018 domestic abuse law. In a separate update issued during National Stalking Awareness Week in April 2026, Police Scotland said it had recorded 744 stalking offences between 1 April and 31 December 2025, up from 686 in the same period a year earlier, with almost half linked to domestic offending.
Frontline specialists say the methods are becoming more complex. Emma Kerr of Aberlour said support workers have seen cloned phones, hidden apps and other tools that allow abusers to hear calls, read texts and inspect photographs without leaving an obvious trace. She also said estranged fathers were using gaming and streaming platforms including Xbox and PlayStation to contact children in breach of access orders, sometimes under false names. Women supported by the charity, she said, have later discovered that former partners still had access to banking apps, shopping accounts, email, streaming devices and location services tied to social media.
That means safety planning now extends well beyond leaving a home. Kerr said risk assessments increasingly begin with questions about apps, passwords and location-sharing, because many women do not initially recognise their phones as possible instruments of abuse. Police Scotland has urged victims to keep a record of incidents, saying stalking often consists of behaviour that is fixated, obsessive, unwanted and repeated. Detective Chief Inspector Gary Sergeant said the effect on victims “cannot be underestimated” and that officers use those reports to build the wider pattern of conduct needed to evidence stalking and arrange safety plans.
The overlap with financial control is also becoming clearer. Refuge said referrals to its specialist Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment team rose to 967 in April 2025 to March 2026 from 542 a year earlier, a 78% increase. Of those more recent referrals, 43%, or 414 survivors, reported economic abuse, up from 37%, or 198 survivors, the previous year. The charity said its staff had seen a growing number of cases involving car finance, with perpetrators coercing partners into expensive agreements or registering vehicles in their names without consent. One survivor described being pushed into signing finance for a luxury car worth more than £100,000 after dealership staff saw the couple arguing.
Prosecution data suggests the justice system is dealing with domestic abuse at large scale, though much of it still passes through lower-level courts. The Crown Office said 26,701 charges in 2024-25 carried a statutory domestic abuse aggravation, accounting for 88% of all domestic abuse charges reported, the same share as in 2023-24. The most common categories were crimes against public justice, including bail offences, at 26%, threatening and abusive behaviour at 25%, and common assault at 23%. Four in five prosecuted charges were dealt with at sheriff summary level, while the proportion taken on solemn procedure stood at 20%.
One recent case illustrates both the brutality of the conduct and the continuing argument over whether sentences are tough enough. At Glasgow Sheriff Court on 13 June 2024, Peter Clarke was convicted of engaging in a course of behaviour abusive of his partner or ex-partner after repeatedly attacking Stacy Clarke at the family home in Kirkintilloch. Reporting from the trial said he forced her to take a lie-detector test, hid a camera inside a Sky TV box and, during one assault, kicked her head “like a football”. He was also convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice and of breaching bail. Sheriff John McCormick said the custodial threshold had been passed, but Clarke, who had spent 229 days on remand, was ultimately given 300 hours of unpaid work, three years of supervision, 12 months on an electronic tag and a 15-year non-harassment order.
The picture that emerges is of abuse that moves easily between physical violence, surveillance, coercion and debt, using consumer technology as the connecting thread. For support agencies, a woman’s escape plan now has to cover routers, shared subscriptions, logins, tracking permissions and linked financial products as well as locks and alarms. For police and prosecutors, the challenge is to prove patterns of conduct that may be partly online and partly offline. And for victims, the warning from charities is stark: ending contact with an abuser is no longer the same as cutting off access.
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