Top 5 safety mobile apps for women in India
Are you fed up with increasing rape cases in India and want to check alternate options for women's safety? Looking for useful apps for safety of women in India? Want to know features of popular women safety apps like Nirbhaya, FightBack and Guardian? Are you looking for safety measures for women in you house? In this article, I have discussed some free mobile applications that can be used by Indian women for their own safety during emergency situations.
The number of rape cases, sexual harassment cases and atrocities on women have increased tremendously in India in recent years. This has made it difficult for single women to stay independently and alone in Indian cities and towns. Women are making great progress in all fields and to build careers many of them are forced to stay alone in big cities and towns. With the rising rate of sexual crime against women, there is a fear in almost every women's heart that makes them think twice before staying alone or roaming alone in unknown areas (or at night). But, the necessity to feed their families or make a career overrides this fear and many women take the bold step to stay alone. Even otherwise, women living with families are also suffering with the same fear due to situations when they have to travel alone or live alone for a while. After the Delhi rape case incident in 2012, this fear has only increased and made life uncomfortable for several women and girls. Newspapers still carry news of rape incidents in India every single day. The Shakti Mills rape case in Mumbai this year was another bad example where a woman was attacked while she was at work. Such cases and lack of initiatives from Indian government to safeguard Indian women has made it necessary for each woman to take care of herself as well as other women in her family. In this article, we shall see how mobile phones and mobile apps play a great role in ensuring security of women in India. Technology has progressed a great deal and if used properly, it is capable of providing safety to women in India. Some of the best safety apps for women in India are discussed below.Nirbhaya
This app was launched for smartphones after an innocent girl named "Nirbhaya" was heinously gang-raped in a moving bus in Delhi last year. The Delhi rape case incident saw a national outrage and led to many initiatives being taken by people of India for safety of women in general. Nirbhaya app for mobile phones was created with this intention. It goes a long way in helping to maintain safety of a woman when she is alone in any part of India. This app was created by Smartcloud Infotech. Nirbhaya app can be configured in such a way that an emergency message is sent (even if phone is in locked condition) to a group of contacts (allocated to Nirbhaya Hot Key) just by shaking of the phone. It has the capability to send some alerts about user's location as well as send updated location information every 300 metres for a time period of up to 2 hours. If a woman is travelling alone at night in an autorickshaw or taxi and doubts the driver for taking her to some unknown lanes, she can simply click on the "Nirbhaya" short cut Hot key from her mobile which shall send an emergency text message with location details to all her contacts that have been configured for this purpose and seek for help.
This app is available for free download on Android and Windows phones. For iOS phones, this app is available as SOS-Be Fearless app for safety of women in India.FightBack
Using the Fightback app, the user can simply click a button on her phone to send an SOS message in the form of text message, Facebook message or email to the group of contacts whom she has pre-configured on her phone for such emergency cases. GPS (Global Positioning system) helps to track the user's location details and sends this information along with the SOS message. It allows one to send quick panic alerts to trustworthy contacts and ensure safety in case of danger situations. For this app to function properly, the user should be in online mode with good GPRS connection.
FightBack app is available for free download on Android devices from Google Play Store.Help Alert
This safety app is designed not only for protecting women against sexual crimes, but also for general public to protect them in emergency cases of robbery, kidnapping, accidents, etc. It continuously sends longitudinal and latitudinal location of the person experiencing emergency situation to his / her chosen group of contacts. The app also allows sending of the user's voice recordings and automatically updates the user's facebook status seeking help from everyone by sharing user's location information. Such alerts will be sent across continuously (as per pre-configured time interval) till the user stops them manually by entering some code.
Help Alert is a free Android app that enhances safety and security of the user by seeking timely help during emergency situations.iFollow - Ladies safety, SOS
This free safety app allows the user to configure maximum 3 personal and trust-worthy contacts for seeking help in emergency cases. iFollow app is triggered by simple shaking of the phone during emergencies. When faced with a danger situation, the user simply has to quickly shake the phone 3 times within 5 seconds to trigger the app's functionality. The app will then immediately call the first contact in the pre-configured list and wait for a response. In case of no response, the app will send the alert with location details via SMS to all 3 contacts. The app will send SOS with updated location information after every 10 meters to the contacts saved for this app.
iFollow app won NASSCOM AppFame award for safety of ladies and is available for free download to Android devices from Google Play Store.Guardian
The Guardian app was introduced today by Microsoft India for women's safety. It is available exclusively for windows phone users. Salient features of Guardian include enabling users to switch "track me" option in the app that helps the chosen contacts of the user to track him / her in real time using Microsoft Windows Azure cloud services and Bing Map APIs. In case of emergencies, the user of Guardian app can call for help via SOS alert button and also connect to police (for crime emergencies) or hospitals (for accident cases) or security agencies (for crime cases). On clicking the "SOS" button, an alert message with location details is sent to the group of contacts chosen by the user for this app as well as emails are sent to configured recipients and even updates are sent on Facebook to selected groups (configured earlier).
Two major advantages of Guardian app are:
-it can be used even if the phone is broken or not working properly.
-it enabled one touch video recording that can serve as an evidence to catch criminals or prove innocence.
With the help of above safety apps for smart phones and several other precautionary measures, safety of women in India can be ensured. Every Indian citizen is responsible for the safety of women in their house, group of friends as well as in their town. Technology is available to make things easier for ensuring women's safety and we need to share this information to as many people as we can.
Read Microsoft IT India Announces the Guardian App for Women's Safety
This seems quite informative.