Be (h)appy, be secure
With a click, mobile apps facilitate help for women in distress
Vibha Sharma

In the wake of surging crime rate against women across the whole of country, need for protection for women is felt at all fronts. The tech world cannot remain isolated from these happenings and tech market is not the one to let go of capitalising on this sector either. Many innovative mobile apps have been created which aim to protect women in distress and want help in emergency situations.

These 10 apps were chosen as the top 10 apps for women security in India. These apps were finalised in the App Fame Contest 2013 conducted by the NASSCOM. NASSCOM had conducted this contest with a motive to find the best available apps developed for women security in India. The contest was open to students, developers as well as for corporates.

From left: Nirbhaya can be used in any emergency for the family; Help Alert sends longitudinal and latitudinal location of the person in distress to contacts; GoSurakshiet seeks help from trusted ones; iFollow works silently & Fightback uses location-based technology to work

1. GoSuraksheit: A security application that enables you to seek help from the contacts you trust the most almost anywhere.

2. Sentinel: A virtual security guard of a woman, sentinel alerts friends and family in an emergency with a single click. Live tracking from the application puts you on a map that is available to your emergency contacts with location, travel history, direction of travel and helps the responders to reach you quickly.

3. Nirbhaya: An app which can be used in any type of emergency to protect women, children and near and dear ones using a “single” click distress signal.

4. SafeBridge: A click of a button sends the exact location information to your near and dear ones in an emergency.

5. FightBack: Uses location-based technology and enables user to fight back against crime. The user can raise panic alerts about her location and the mobile app tracks user's movement through GPS and send location information to the server.

6. One-Touch SOS: This single click SOS is sent quickly when you are in danger. The location is sent to the receiver with a marker on the map.

7. inE: The application enables the user to send messages to pre-set numbers through a short-cut method. From the message, the recipient can identify the information such as longitude, latitude and the tower position of the user.

8. iFollow: A personal app which works on the mobile silently. This works as a background activity to reduce power consumption. Once iFollow is activated, your phone is capable to generate calls to your prime contacts by just shaking the device.

9. SafeTrac: This app allows automatic monitoring and tracking of your journey. With the click of a button, you can immediately raise an alert in case of any threat or emergency and an SMS gets sent to your emergency contact.

10. PanicGuard: As soon as the alert is activated through the application, your current location and the route from the time of activation of PanicGuard is sent to your emergency contacts via sms, email, Facebook and Twitter updates. PanicGuard also automatically starts recording video in secrecy.

The main objective of these apps is to send a distress call or emergency signal, using a single click of a button. Using the GPS, the apps are able to send the location of the caller to the receivers. Hollaback, bSafe, Guardly, OnWatch, Street Safe, Circle of 6, are some other great apps which can serve as saviour of women in distress.

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