Incidents of crimes have ever been rising in all the cities in India, and more over so crimes concerning women have tore down the roof. With lot of legal advisories and NGO coming up for help for the “soft targets” and making the cities safer for people, in this era of technology almost everyone uses a mobile phone to keep in touch with their family and friends. Here are few apps which you can use as an emergency SOS tool against crimes.
1. FightBack – FightBack is India’s first ever mobile application for women’s safety launched by an NGO named WhyPoll. The application makes use of your phone’s GPS, SMS, GPRS, e-mail, Twitter and your Facebook account to send SOS alerts by the press of a single button. The app will also send your approximate GPS location via every media chosen so that you can be tracked easily. This app is specially launched for Indian women, although children and elders can also be benefited with the app. The app is free for Android, BlackBerry and Nokia smartphones. There’s no such annoincement for iOS.
2. Eye-Watch – Another app designed specifically for Indians, Eye-watch also works similarly like FightBack but with few more features like sounding a siren along with warning your emergency contacts via SMS, e-mail and even phone call. There’s also a feature to alert your emergency contacts in case the phone falls, again sounding a siren at the time of alerting. There is a provision to record the event of emergency, which can be later used as an evidence. This app is available for free for Android, BlackBerry, iOS and Symbian OS
3. Safe – A GPS based app that can sends a alerts via SMS/call to the selected numbers in case of emergency. It sports a big red button which triggers the alert when you press it, sending the alert SMS and call to a specified person. It can also track you in real-time based on your GPS location and send the information to your family and friends. While in Safe mode, it will automatically send an alert message to the emergency contacts in case you don’t report after a pre-defined time interval, highly useful feature if you have gone for jogging, a long trip, mountaineering or hiking. It’s available for Android, iOS and BlackBerry phones and tablets.
4. Life 360 Family Locator – Another GPS based app, which functions like Safe, tracking and alerting about your location. You can set a group of pre-defined tasks which you frequently do, like going for a movie, coming late or playing outside the locality, and send the alerts to all the emergency contacts with a pish of a button. It has a single button for all kind of emergencies.If you are in a major city, the app will also show you nearest police stations, hospitals and fire stations. The app is available for smartphones as well as for non-smartphones too!
5. Circle of 6 – As it is evident from the name, Circle of 6 lets you choose 6 trusted people in your contact to send an SMS alert in case you get into a risky and uncomfortable situation. It sends a pre-programmed message to all the 6 contacts with your exact coordinate location at that particular time.
6. Mobi Tracker LocateMe – This app does very simple task of sending your location to your selected contacts via SMS and nothing else. Not much useful but still useful nonetheless. The app is available for Android only for now.
7. One Touch Location – This is one app which can selectively track your location with the help of GPS and GPRS connection of your phone. If for example you are leaving your office late at night, you can alert you friends and family about the event and then start your tracking until you reach your destination. After which, the tracking turns off and everyone recieves a message your safe arrival. This app is available for Android and iOS.
8. SOS Whistle – Rather than sending a panic alert to your contacts, the SOS whistle just sounds a whistle in a loud volume to let the passer-by know that uou are in some kind of trouble, even if the phone is in silent mode. Tapping the screen button will start an alarm and you can be hopeful of coming in notice of people around you if you are too scared to shout by yourself.
Please use these apps, whichever you are comfortable with and have an aid for your safety. Spread awareness about these apps to everyone.