Long pressing on the number 9 will automatically send a distress signal to the cops and registered contacts.
The Indian Government is all set to roll out its Panic Alert facility in March 2016. Long pressing the number 9 on your smartphones will alert the authorities as well as your registered distress contacts with a GPS location of you and your smartphone. The facility is being rolled out to strengthen safety measures for women and children in the country. For future handsets, the panic alert will be activated by pressing both the volume keys of a device at the same time.
The Government's Panic Alert facility has been in the works for quite some time now. It has been a long awaited initiative by Women and Child Development Minister, Maneka Gandhi. A final call on this facility was taken in a meeting between industry heads and concerned ministeries, called for by the Ministries of Communication & Information Technology, Women & Child development. According to an ET source, the decision to make handsets comply with the Panic Alert facility was taken keeping in mind that most people in rural areas do not possess a smartphone and still make do with feature phones. For the same reason, a panic alert app was not a feasible solution.
Smartphone users in India already have many options to choose from when it comes to panic alert facilities. VithU is a safety app that can send a distress message using the phone's power button. bSafe is another app that allows users to remotely live track each other's GPS location. App based Taxi services like Ola and Uber also have a built-in feature for alerting contacts in the time of an emergency.
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