Stalking will soon be a crime in New Zealand. To read about what stalking is, and how it is likely to be defined in New Zealand law as a crime, read our blog: What is stalking and what will the new stalking law do?
If you are being stalked by a partner, ex-partner, or anyone with whom you have a close, personal relationship, it may help to seek support from Shine or another family violence helpline or local service. Family violence services can help in any of these ways, if any of these might be useful for you:
- Supporting you to report the stalking to police and advocate on your behalf for the police to respond appropriately, i.e. once the new stalking law is passed, give a warning if that’s what you want to happen, or arrest if there’s been a pattern of two or more stalking acts.
- Help you understand how a Protection Order works, how to apply, help you think through the pros and cons, and refer you to a lawyer.
- Advocate on your behalf, such as with anyone your stalker has told lies to about you or communicated with pretending to be you in order to harm your reputation
- Apply on your behalf for the Women’s Refuge Whānau Protect service to upgrade your home security, which you may be eligible for if you are at high risk of further family violence and want to separate or remain separated from your (ex) partner. This service includes installing a home alarm that directly connects you to police when activated, as well as security upgrades such as installing new locks, security lighting, window stays, replacing a front door with windows with a solid door, etc.
- Help you think through the ideas below and what is going to work best for you, help to implement the ideas you want to do, possibly suggest other ideas, and advocate for you.
Below is more information and ideas about what you might be able to do on your own or with support from trusted family, friends or services.
Home security
If you’re not eligible for Whānau Protect, you may want to consider upgrading your own home security if you have funds available to do this. For example, installing security lights, cameras, bolt locks, window stays, a security screen, or replacing a glass paneled front door with a solid door.
You may (also) want to consider:
- Talking to your trusted neighbours and agreeing on a plan for what they will do if they see something suspicious, such as ringing you immediately with a code word and agreed responses to let them know if you are safe and whether they need to take an agreed action, such as ringing police if you reply a certain way.
- Making it as easy as possible for supportive neighbours to see your front door and/or other parts of your house or property, e.g. trim back trees, bushes, (re)move sheds, leaving outdoor lights on, etc.
- Consider getting a dog.
- If you’ve relocated to a confidential address, contact Elections NZ on 0800 367 656 or www.elections.org.nz to ask for your name / address to be excluded from the published electoral roll.
- Search for your name online to see what information is available. If there is information online about you that you would like removed, contact the websites to see if it can be removed. If websites do not reply and/or do not remove the content, contact Netsafe for assistance.
- Make sure your children know how to ring 111 and ask for police, and consider agreeing on a code word to let them know to do that without alerting the stalker should they come to your house.
Personal security when you’re not home
You should not have to limit your activities or your children’s to protect yourself and them, but it’s understandable if you want to do so to improve your safety. Some things you may want to consider doing to maintain your freedom are:
- Make sure you know where your local police station is and what hours it is open, so that if you notice you’re being following you can go directly there, otherwise it’s probably safest to go somewhere as public as possible.
- Talk to people at the places you spend the most time or go most frequently and let them know you are being stalked by your ex-partner, you’re worried about your safety, and you’d like them to keep their eyes open and take an agreed action if they see your stalker. That might include asking them to prepare a trespass notice to serve on that person if they come on site, or asking police to serve the trespass notice on the person immediately.
- If you are employed, it could be a good idea to let your employer know you are being stalked as they have a specific responsibility to provide a safe workplace for you under the Health & Safety at Work Act 2015. You might consider asking them to prepare a trespass notice or ask police to serve a notice, as in the previous point. There are more ideas about how your employer may be able to support your safety in Shine’s DVFREE Guidelines, particularly in the section on Planning for Workplace Safety and Wellbeing.
- Related to the previous point, if you have a protection order, make sure all the people at places you go to most frequently know about the order and have a copy if helpful, and know that you’d like their help to enforce the order by taking agreed action like ringing police ASAP if the order is breached.
- Similarly, if you have pre-school or school-age children, you may want to talk to the school, kindy, preschool, daycare, or anyone who has care of your children (after school care, sports club, etc) about your safety concerns so they know what to do if your stalker comes onsite.
- Consider letting a trusted friend or family member know when you go out if you have concerns about safety, which could be by using a free personal safety app such as the GetHomeSafe - Personal Safety App
GPS tracking
How it works
Smart phones, and many other devices with GPS tracking capability, can be used to track where someone is, often without that person knowing they are being tracked.
- The most common way this is done is by using an app on your phone/device. Some of these apps come built into the phone’s operating system - like ‘Find my iPhone’, while others can be downloaded from an app store - like ‘Find My Friends’ or ‘Kid360’ (for parents to track their children’s location).
- Some of these apps need to be open to be accessed, but some can run in the background and continuously transmit your location without being open.
- Phones can also be tracked by accessing the Apple (iPhone) or Google (Android) account within a browser.
- Most tracking methods use a phone’s GPS, but it can be done in other ways if GPS is not enabled, such as using cell networks and wi-fi connections.
- Some tracking apps can monitor more than just physical location, for example, they may be able to send the content of text messages, call logs, photos and social media posts.
Beware that GPS tracking devices can also be installed on your car, suitcase, etc.
What you can do
You may want to try to figure out what each app does on your phone, and uninstall any apps that are able to track your location.
It’s a good idea to make sure you’re the only one with access to your Google or Apple account, which you can do by following these steps:
- Change your password for your smartphone account (Google or Apple) OR create a completely new account and replace your old account with the new one. You should be able to export your contacts fairly easily from your old account to the new one.
- Make a note of all apps that you need on your phone (which you will reinstall at a later step), then delete all apps on your phone by resetting your phone to factory settings.
- Reinstall the apps you need on your phone, and change the passwords for all of your smartphone/online accounts, especially all of your social media accounts.
- Check with your mobile service provider to ensure that no one else has access to your phone account, or another option is to set up a new account with a new provider and a new phone number.
Be aware that if your children bring their phone or device with them to have access visits with the other parent who is stalking you, that person may install tracking apps on your children’s devices. Consider strategies to prevent this from alerting your stalker to where you and your children are, for example by only allowing specific devices on access visits, and those devices are otherwise to remain at your house.
If you’re worried there may be a tracker installed on your car (or in your suitcase etc), you can first try to find it just by having a careful look over your car, including in hard to reach/see places under and inside the car, looking for anything unusual or out of place. If you can’t see anything but suspect something is there, you can purchase a bug detector to scan for tracking devices, including relatively cheap detectors from Dick Smiths, etc.
Digital / online stalking & Netsafe
Aside from GPS tracking, stalking can include a range of abuse tactics using online accounts and technology. Stalkers may, for example:
- Hack your or your children’s or friends’ social media accounts to keep tabs on you or try to ruin your reputation by spreading lies or impersonating you online
- Access your financial accounts to harm you financially, by purchasing things with your accounts or in your name etc.
- Access your health accounts or other accounts with private information that can be used to harm your reputation or embarrass you, or to make health or other professionals believe things about you that aren’t true
What you can do:
- Make sure no one else has access to any of your online accounts, which may be easier said than done. If you have any concerns about an account being accessed by your stalker, start by changing your account password(s). Think not just about social media accounts, but other accounts important for your finances, health and daily life such as bank accounts, MyMSD, MyIR, RealMe, Manage My Health, online grocery shopping, App store.
- Think about social media and other online accounts that your children have and how you can limit the risks they will be accessed to harm you or them. How to do this will depend hugely on your children’s ages and whether they are fearful and/or want to maintain contact directly with your stalker.
It can be a good idea to collect any evidence of stalking, even if you don’t want to report it to Police right now, just in case you decide to in the future. Evidence may also be helpful for convincing people when it’s important for them to believe what you’re telling them and they may not otherwise. This could be the case, for example, if your stalker tries to damage your reputation with doxxing or telling people you know lies about you.
If you’re being tracked online, it can be tricky to take steps to protect yourself if you don’t want to alert your stalker. You might want to ask someone you trust to take photos of any digital evidence and store them for you on their device, or print out hard copies and store them.
A similar idea is to install the free Bright Sky app on your device and use its secure journal feature to send digital evidence to a safe email address, so that you don’t need to store anything on your device(s) and it doesn’t show in your email sent items. There is another app that costs $49 called Dispute Buddy, which allows you to export all texts from selected contacts and date range to a ‘lawyer-friendly’ pdf, without you having to scroll through and read them (again) to screenshot or otherwise save them one at a time. It is explained on the NZ Law Association’s website.
Advice from Netsafe and further resources
Netsafe is New Zealand’s independent, not-for-profit, online safety organization. They are not family violence specialists, but they can provide practical tools, support and advice on online safety.
Netsafe has a 4-page resource on technology-facilitated coercive control that may be helpful. It was created with Women’s Refuge, Shine, and the Light Project, to help people recognise, understand, and find support for technology-facilitated coercive control, and is aimed at those experiencing abuse and their support people.
Netsafe, Shine, Women’s Refuge, and the Light Project are currently collaborating to produce a resource about online stalking and how Netsafe can help, which should be published on Netsafe’s website early 2026.
The Ministry of Women has a Free to Lead toolkit that can support women with a public profile or who use online spaces for work, and for their employers, to provide them with practical tools and strategies to act against online abuse.
Shine resources such as the Safer Homes Booklet might provide some useful information about what you are experiencing and your options.
If you are supporting someone else, read more at www.2shine.org.nz/get-involved/help-someone-you-know
Getting help
It is totally understandable if this all feels like more than you can manage and you need help. Family violence helplines and local services are here to support you. We can just listen if that’s what you want.
These free-to-call, 24-7 helplines can provide support, information and referrals to services you might need:
Shine: 0508-744-633 or chat online www.2shine.org.nz
Women’s Refuge: 0800-733-843
Chat online without any browser history through the Shielded Site by clicking on this icon at or near the very bottom of websites like The Warehouse, Stuff, Woolworths, etc
AreYouOK Infoline: 0800-456-450