How to use your smartphone as a personal safety device

New Delhi: Our cities are unsafe for women and as numerous recent incidents have shown that the authorities are also inept in curbing the menace of molestation and rape. With the increasing popularity of smartphones, women have a friend at hand in times of distress. Ashish Tanwar, head R&D, Indian Eye Security, the company behind the personal security app EyeWatch shares some tips on how to use your smartphone as a personal safety device.

A smartphone with following features can help in an emergency situation:

- Support for Location Based service (LBS) (generally used for GPS navigation)

- Video/audio recording

- Accelerometer

- 2G/3G connectivity

All the above features are readily available even in low-end smartphones available in the market. All the leading smartphone manufacturers like Blackberry, Android, iPhone and others have these features built-in. Smart use of your phone can help you avert the aggressor and even help in identifying and nabbing him.

When feeling vulnerable

- Be on alert, keep some family member on call updating them of your location

- Take a picture of the surroundings, share it with social networking tools

- Keep sharing your location with applications like Latitude and Facebook.

- Take a video of surroundings and any potential threats. Share it with friends/family using leading social networking sites or email.

Using specialised applications

There are sophisticated applications available for leading smartphones which would achieve all the above with just one click. Most of these applications are free.

- These applications can keep recording the users location

- They can automatically trigger an emergency in case of a fall using the accelerometer

- Call up police/relatives/friends and provide you with your location

- Automatically record and upload audio/video of the incident for analysis

- Help the search and rescue with accurate user location and medical help.