App turns smartphones into panic buttons

CIUDAD JUÁREZ: The Mexican city of Juarez has been dubbed “the capital of murdered women”; since the 1990s, hundreds of women have been raped, killed and dumped in the desert, or simply disappeared without a trace.

Now, the border city, which sits across from El Paso, Texas, is fighting back by launching an application that turns women’s smartphones into panic buttons.

The app, called “I Am Not Alone” (“No estoy sola” in Spanish), lets users send alerts to their emergency contacts by shaking their phones or clicking a button.

It does not require a data plan, instead sending text messages with a link that enables the recipient to see the user’s location on Google Maps.

“Wherever you have cell phone coverage, you can use the app,” said Miguel David Diaz de Leon, technology and communications director at Juarez City Hall.

“Help, I have an emergency. This is my location,” say the messages.

The app continues sending them every five to 10 minutes, or until the user deactivates them.

The app is currently only available for Android phones, but the city is working on versions for other systems.

Launched last week, the app has already been downloaded more than 13,000 times.

Juarez has been working to shed the dark distinction of being one of the world’s most dangerous cities for women.

The crisis has eased somewhat since the 1990s when rights groups estimate that more than 1,500 women were murdered.

The victims were primarily poor young women who had come to the city to work in the “maquila” industry, factories that assemble products to ship across the border.

Many were found raped and brutally tortured, their bodies left in the desert that surrounds the city.

These days, violence in Juarez makes fewer international headlines. It is no longer Mexico’s