Nearly every woman has been taught to never walk alone at night. Women are conditioned to be scared of being alone and to even fear the outside world on their own. Women’s safety is a major issue that needs to be addressed as women must learn to protect themselves in an uncertain world. 

These top five safety apps help many women feel safe, and could possibly save a life. 

• Parachute

Parachute is a worldwide emergency safety app created in 2015. For a premium membership costing $9.99 per month, Parachute offers a variety of emergency safety services for all situations. This app offers 15 safety features which were created to protect a victim in any attack. The app design has easy-to-use activation steps, which helps if the victim has shaky or unstable hands. The activation can also connect to Siri using a secret passphrase, or on a Parachute widget on the home screen of your iPhone. It also calls, texts and emails every emergency contact downloaded to the app at the same time. Instead of sending every individual message or call, the Parachute app sends them for you. Parachute records a phone alert message for all emergency contacts for them to hear when they answer the phone.

Emergency contacts can also see, hear and follow the victim in real time of the emergency through a live video which shares the location of where the situation is occurring. The video also captures both front and back cameras, as well as all microphones simultaneously so it will capture clear evidence even if a finger is accidentally blocking a camera or microphone. When recording, the Parachute app blacks out the screen in order to make it more difficult for the attacker to notice and potentially cause more harm.The video evidence is stored from the iPhone and is downloaded to the emergency contacts in order to review the incident, even if the original iPhone is destroyed. If the attacker gets a hold of the iPhone, they won’t be able to find or delete the evidence recorded even if the victim is forced to reveal the pass-code. 

Using the Superlock feature, Parachute prevents an unauthorized attacker from switching off the video evidence unless the secret six digit pass-code is entered. Parachute also works in areas with bad reception without the quality being messed up. If connected with Twitter, the Parachute app will also tweet out the live video and prewritten message of your choice for all followers to see. After 12 hours, the Parachute app will check up on the victim and alert emergency contacts again if the victim does not mark their safety. 

• Safe Up
• Safe Up is another free community safety app available for unsafe situations. If you’ve ever felt anxious walking home alone at night or scared walking back to your car, this app is for you. This app connects you to surrounding guardians in your area, who will join you on a video safety call when walking alone or just feeling unsafe. These guardians (who are over the age of 18) can provide help virtually through a safety call or even physically come to you using the shared location feature on the app. The video call can make women feel less alone in any unsafe situation. Most users of this app are female due to the app being directed towards women, but there will be further updates to ensure more protection for both women and men. 
• Grooop

Grooop is a free safety platform serving all communities in all areas. Grooop allows users to create a personalized account and personalized grooops with safety status updates. Any user can invite any friends to the personalized grooops through phone, email or contacts. In these grooops, you can keep track of your friends’ status, location and notify other users in the group with their whereabouts. Users can also mark a location and label it, based on the area they designate as “safe”. You can also share who you are with to other users, and the group will be automatically notified when a user leaves a safety zone. Grooop is available on widgets for every iPhone home screen, making it easier to access the app and update your status in an unsafe situation. This app includes a great mixture of social and safety features that are great for any friend group.  

• Noonlight

Noonlight is an emergency app available for free with in-app purchases. After creating a Noonlight account, a customizable noonlight alarm is created. The Noonlight alarms can detect automatic triggers such as car crash detection, heavy smoke detection and medical/emergency detection. After the alarm is created and detects a trigger, the Noonlight app calls or texts the user. If the user does not respond or cancels the alarm using a customizable Noonlight pin number, the closest first responders will be notified with the user’s exact location. Noonlight also allows users to connect their app with Tinder. If you’re on a date and begin to feel unsafe, you can press the “unsafe” button without entering your Noonlight pin, and the police will be notified with the location and emergency. Users can also add information or plans to their own customized timeline, and can update the authorities with relevant information taken from the user’s line. 

Noonlight also allows users to connect with friends by adding them to your own safety network. Friends can request a safety check-in for other users, and if there is no response, the authorities will be notified to report to the location. This app is a great option for women of all ages. 

• Sekura 

Sekura is a free and simple safety app with easy access to any and all users. Sekura comes with four safety features, including a ringtone button, siren button, emergency button and message button. The ringtone button creates a realistic ringtone noise to fake an incoming call and distract or scare off the attacker. The siren button creates a loud siren sound to catch the attacker off guard. The emergency button calls an emergency number that the user puts in. The message button sends a pre-set message with a current location to three emergency contacts. Users can also mark their location when it gets dark outside, and protect others from unsafe areas in the community. This app is one of the easiest to download and use. 

Take a moment to download some of these apps. Choose your safety first.