I’ve lived in New York City for all my adult life, and for the most part, I feel safe when I’m out walking around. But traveling alone through certain areas, especially late at night, often makes me nervous. I’d feel a lot safer, generally, if there was someone there making the walk with me.
Thankfully, if you own a mobile device, you’re never truly alone. If you have an ongoing concern for your personal safety, there are personal safety apps like Noonlight (available for iOS and Android) that connect you to a 24/7 dispatch service for $3 per month. You can also use these services with your Amazon Alexa-enable devices or Google Assistant device to ask for help if you're away from your phone at home. But if you just want a way to warn your contacts if you fail to check-in or otherwise need to send out an SOS, there's no need to pay. Here are great free options for providing a little bit of extra piece of mind.
NOTE: If you believe yourself to be in a real emergency, your first line of defense should always be to contact emergency services at 911. No app is 100% foolproof, and cannot substitute for professional first responders.
SirenGPS
The SirenGPS app delivers one touch 911 dialings for fire, ambulance, and police. Keep the app open when you feel uncomfortable for easy access. Where SirenGPS really shines, though, is when you're traveling abroad and may not know the appropriate number to call, or if you live in a community that has paired with SireGPS. For participating communities, the app will send your personal information, including medical history and your emergency contact information.
The app is available for iOS and Android.
Life360 Family Locator
Sometimes safety can mean a daily check-in to ensure someone is following their daily routine. With Life360 Family Locator loaded on your family members' smartphones, you can set up Place Alerts, so you'll always know when your child arrives home from school or at soccer practice. You can also check in on any family member's location. With the free service, you can designate two places for alerts and view location history for two days. Moving up to Life360Plus ($2.99 per month or $24.99 per year) lets you designate up to 100 places with unlimited alerts. And Life360Driver Protect adds crash detection, emergency response and roadside assistance, as well as reports on driving behavior ($7.99 per month or $69.99 per year).
The app is available for iOS and Android.
Kitestring
Kitestring is a bit different: It’s a web-based service that checks in with you and sends an alert to pre-selected contacts should you fail to respond. Kitestring works through your inaction.
Kitestring check-ins are sent by SMS text, so the service works even with feature phones – you simply need to visit the free service’s website at kitestring.io. Once you have your phone set up, you can visit the Kitestring site to customize your SOS message and activate an SMS message broadcast that will be sent out in 30 minutes, 2 hours, 5 hours or 12 hours. Or, you can simply text the Kitestring service with the number of minutes in which to active your SMS broadcast. Once the time is up, you get a check-in message, and if for some reason you’re unable to respond to that text within 5 minutes, Kitestring will let your contacts know. You can even set a check-in word and duress code, so Kitestring will keep working even if someone else gains control of your phone.
With Kitestring Free, you can take three trips and have one emergency contact. Upgrading to Kitestring Plus for $3 per month enables you to take unlimited trips, have an unlimited number of emergency contacts, and has a Perrenial Mode, which enables you to be checked up on as frequently as every few minutes.
Updated on 8/9/2019 with new app suggestions
[man walking in empty parking lot via BigStockPhoto, Kitestring, SirenGPS, Life360]
There is another great safety
From Diana on April 25, 2014 :: 11:14 am
There is another great safety app that I use. It is not free but is only $1.99 for both apple and android. It is called safetrek and it will automatically call 911 if you feel unsafe and will use your phones location to help police locate you. It was featured on Good Morning America last week.
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Safetrek is not free
From paula on July 16, 2016 :: 5:16 pm
according to my sign up they will automatically renew. Can not see where to cancel this app.
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Ways to stop Apps
From Deborah Johnson on October 05, 2019 :: 1:20 pm
If you can’t find the way to stop it just go into your settings and look for apps and in that list should show your app that you want to stop. You will see the word permission, tap on that, you can turn off the permission, then force stop it and they will notice that it is not being used. Which will cause them to send you some kind of notice then you can explain to them you no longer want that app, for whatever reason you you don’t want it.
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