Could This App Save Your Life?

You know those times when you'd really like to meet up with a cute guy from Tinder, but you're slightly worried that you might wind up dead and dismembered because he's secretly a serial killer straight out of Hannibal? Well, there's a new app to help keep that from happening. It's called Kitestring, and it gives you a back up plan in case something goes wrong.

This is how the app works: you choose an emergency contact (or multiple emergency contacts) and create a custom message you'd like this person or persons to receive when you're in trouble. When you're going into a situation you think might be risky — whether its a Tinder date, a walk home after dark, or anything else that makes you concerned for your safety — you turn the app on and tell it when to check in on you. If you don't respond to the text message it sends you, it will automatically send out your distress message to your emergency contacts.

I can think of so many uses for this.

Kitestring is one of many apps that are designed to make people safer. CircleOf6, for example, lets you choose six friends and send out a variety of distress signals, such as "I need help getting home safely," with just a few clicks. Other apps, like bSafe, even let your friends track your location in case something goes wrong (though you can turn off that function when you want to). But Kitestring is different in that it doesn't require a command in order to let people know you're in trouble. In a situation where you're attacked before you can get to your phone, most apps aren't much good. But an app that notifies your emergency contacts when you don't respond? That sounds much more useful in a real life situation.

Of course, this still could cause some unnecessary panic if your phone dies on you, making you unable to receive or reply to the check in message. But I guess it's better to freak your roommates out when you're actually fine than it is to get into real trouble and not have anyone realize.

Now if someone could just make that fake phone call app that turned out to be a hoax. Because that needs to exist for real, guys. Because some Tinder dates need to end for reasons that have nothing to do with serial killers.