People assume the risk here is him messaging them. That is the least of it, and it is the part that is easiest to stop.
The real problem is that an ordinary social media presence broadcasts a surprising amount about where somebody is, and most of it is published by other people rather than by you.
What actually gives you away
- Backgrounds. A signboard, a gate, a landmark, a bus route, a church behind you. A single photograph frequently narrows a location to a street.
- Other people’s posts. A friend tags you at her shop. A relative posts a photograph from a naming ceremony. A colleague posts the team at lunch. You published nothing and your location is out.
- Timing. Posting live tells anybody watching where you are now rather than where you were.
- Status updates and stories, which people treat as temporary and are not — they are screenshotted within minutes.
- Your friends list. A public list is a map of who to approach, and approaching your friends is what he will do.
- Business accounts. If you trade online, the account has a location, delivery details and a phone number, and it has to stay findable to work.
- The children’s accounts. Older children post the school, the uniform, the street and the new house without any idea what they are doing.
- Photo details. Images sometimes carry the location they were taken in. Most large platforms strip that, but files sent directly through a messaging app or by email frequently do not.
The first hour of work
- Change every password, starting with the email account the others reset through. Use something that is not a version of an old password, and not a family name, date or place he could guess.
- Turn on two-step verification everywhere it is offered, and make sure the recovery phone number and recovery email are yours and current. A recovery number that is still his gives him every account.
- Sign out all other devices. Every platform has this, usually under security or active sessions. Old tablets, a laptop in the house and a phone he still holds all lose access at once.
- Check which apps have access to your accounts and remove anything you do not recognise.
- Turn off location on everything. Posting, tagging, and any feature that shows friends nearby.
- Make your friends list private, and your following and follower lists where you can.
- Turn off tagging without approval, so nothing appears on your profile until you have seen it.
- Check what a stranger sees. Every platform has a way to view your own profile as somebody who is not connected to you. Do it, and be surprised by how much is public.
Blocking, and why it is not always first
Blocking feels like the obvious first move and it has two consequences worth thinking about.
It tells him immediately, and it can escalate things at exactly the wrong moment. It also removes your view of what he is posting, which is sometimes evidence — threats, references to your location, or posts about you to mutual contacts.
A common approach is to restrict rather than block: limit what he can see, stop notifications, and keep a way of monitoring his public activity through somebody else or a separate account. Then block when you are ready, ideally at the same time as other steps rather than on its own.
Whatever you do, screenshot anything threatening before it disappears, with the date and the account name visible. How to keep that record applies here.
The accounts you did not think about
Delivery apps and ride-hailing apps hold your address history, and a shared or family account exposes all of it. Check who else is on them.
Shopping accounts keep delivery addresses. Banking and payment apps show transaction locations. Fitness and running apps publish routes, which is a straightforward map of where you live and when you are out. Dating apps show distance, which is more precise than most people realise.
Photo libraries that sync automatically are the worst of these, because a picture taken at the new house appears on a device at the old one within seconds, and nobody has to do anything at all.
What to ask of other people
This is the part that actually matters, and it needs to be said plainly rather than hinted at.
Ask your family and close friends for four specific things: do not tag you, do not post photographs with you in them, do not post about where you are or where you have moved to, and do not respond to him if he messages them asking how you are.
That last one surprises people. It is the standard route: he contacts the friendly cousin, expresses concern, and gets an answer within a day. Nobody involved intends any harm.
Give the same instruction to the school about photographs on their pages, and to your employer about staff pictures and announcements. Both do this routinely and neither will find it strange.
Older children
They are the most common leak and the hardest to manage, because you cannot supervise every post and you should not try.
What works is one rule rather than a lecture: nothing about where we live, the house, the street or the school goes online. Not the new uniform, not the gate, not the view from the window. Give them a reason they can accept without a frightening explanation, check their privacy settings with them rather than behind their backs, and turn off location sharing on their devices.
Also check who can see their friends list, because that is the route to them.
If you would rather not disappear
Going silent online is not always right and it costs some people their livelihood or their last connection to other people.
The workable middle is to stay visible but stop being locatable. Post after the fact rather than live. Keep backgrounds plain. Move a business account’s address to a pickup point rather than your home. Use a separate number for anything public. And accept that anything posted publicly may be seen by him, and post accordingly rather than assuming a privacy setting will hold.
If this has already gone past posts and into pursuit, what to do when he will not leave you alone deals with that, including what to keep and what to report.
Questions people ask
Should I block him straight away?
Not always. Blocking tells him immediately, can escalate things, and removes your view of what he posts, which is sometimes evidence. Restricting first and blocking as part of a wider set of steps is often better.
I never post anything. Am I safe?
Not necessarily. Most location leaks come from other people — a tagged photograph, a relative’s post, a friend answering a concerned message about how you are.
What is the single most important setting?
The recovery email and phone number on your main email account. If those are still his, changing everything else achieves nothing.
My children post constantly. What do I do?
One rule instead of a lecture: nothing about where we live, the street, the house or the school. Check their settings with them, turn off location sharing, and check who can see their friends list.
He keeps making new accounts to contact me. What can I do?
Screenshot everything with the date and account name visible before you block, report the accounts to the platform, and keep a running list. Repeated contact after being told to stop is relevant both to a protection order and to a criminal complaint.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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