// Victim Resource Guide
A professional sweep may take a day or two to arrange. In the meantime, these steps reduce your most accessible risks without alerting your abuser or compromising evidence.
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// 01 - While You Are Waiting for a Sweep
A professional TSCM sweep may take a day or two to arrange around your safety plan. In the meantime, there are practical steps you can take right now that reduce your risk without alerting your abuser or compromising evidence.
These are not substitutes for a professional sweep — they will not find a hidden camera or a hardwired GPS device. But they significantly reduce the most accessible risks while you wait.
// 02 - Your Vehicle
Until your vehicle has been swept, park in locations covered by CCTV — near the entrance of shopping centres, service stations, or your workplace car park. This does not stop a tracker already in place, but it deters physical placement of a new one and creates a record of your vehicle's location that is not dependent on a tracker your abuser controls.
Immediate actionA locked garage, secured car park, or gated facility prevents overnight access to your vehicle — the most common time for tracker placement. If you do not have access to secured parking, park under street lighting as a minimum.
Overnight safetyAirGuard is free on iOS and Android. Open it and run a manual scan of your vehicle before driving anywhere sensitive — particularly to a new address, a refuge, a lawyer, or a support worker. If it detects an unknown device, do not go to your destination. Contact Safe Sweep first.
Download nowIf you need a justified reason for the time and travel, we can supply an itemised invoice from a mechanical workshop marked as a vehicle safety check. It gives you a plausible everyday explanation whether we come to you or you come to us. There is no cost — the invoice is marked at $0 and exists purely as cover. Just ask when you book.
// 03 - Your Passwords
Before anything else, if your abuser knows or may know your passwords, change them from a safe device at a location away from your home and vehicle. Do this in the following order — each one closes a different access point.
Your email is the master key. Password resets for every other account are sent here. If your abuser has access to your email, they can access everything else. Change this first, then enable two-factor authentication using a phone number they do not know.
Change firstThese accounts control your device backup, location sharing, Find My, and Family Sharing. Change the password and immediately check who has access to your account under Settings and connected devices.
Change secondFinancial monitoring is a common coercive control tool. Change your banking passwords and PIN. Check whether your abuser is listed as an authorised user on any accounts and contact your bank to remove that access.
Change thirdIf your abuser knows your WiFi password, they can connect to your network remotely from outside your home and see which devices are connected. Change the WiFi password and the router admin password. Your internet provider can assist if you are unsure how.
Change fourthCheck which devices are currently logged into each social media account and log out all sessions except your own. Change passwords and check location sharing settings — some platforms share your location with connections by default.
Change fifthIf your abuser knows your work login or can access your work email, they can monitor your professional communications, know your schedule, and track your whereabouts through calendar entries. Notify your IT department confidentially if you have concerns.
Notify IT if concerned// 04 - Your Home
Until a sweep is complete, have any sensitive conversations — legal discussions, plans to leave, contact with a support worker — outside the property and away from your vehicle. A walk around the block, a trusted friend's home, or a public space away from any device your abuser installed are all safer.
Until sweep is completeAny smart speaker, security camera, doorbell camera, or smart home device that your abuser installed or configured may still be accessible through their account. Do not discuss anything sensitive near these devices. If possible, unplug them — but photograph them first as they may be evidence.
Photograph before unpluggingIf your abuser has or has had a key to your home, change the locks before the sweep if possible. Physical access is the easiest way to plant surveillance devices. A locksmith can replace a standard lock within an hour.
Priority if they have a key// 05 - How Easy Is It for an Abuser to Surveil You?
The surveillance technology now available is not specialist or expensive. Basic GPS trackers are available online for as little as $20. Hidden cameras disguised as USB chargers or smoke detectors sell for under $30. A device can be physically installed in under 15 seconds. Stalkerware apps can be installed on a phone in under a minute.
This is not meant to cause alarm — it is meant to explain why the threat is real even if your abuser does not have a technical background. They do not need one. The equipment does the work.
It is also why consumer detection does not work. These devices are designed by manufacturers specifically to survive a visual search and to stay invisible to phone apps. Defeating that design takes spectrum analysis, non linear junction detection, optical retroreflection and thermal imaging, applied by an operator who knows how to read them. That capability is what Safe Sweep brings.
If a professional sweep finds nothing, that is also a valuable result. Knowing your home, vehicle, and belongings are clean allows you to make decisions — legal, personal, practical — from a position of certainty rather than constant suspicion. For many clients, the sweep result matters as much psychologically as legally.
These steps reduce your immediate exposure. They do not replace a professional sweep. Contact us to plan one around your safety.
These steps reduce exposure. A sweep gives you certainty. Tell us what is happening.