Police Scotland has highlighted the benefits of Hollie Guard, a free mobile app that turns a mobile phone into a personal safety device.
It was named after, Hollie Gazzard, a 20yr old hairdresser from Gloucester who was murdered by her ex-partner in 2014.
A simple shake or tap activates Hollie Guard and on activation it will notify chosen trusted contacts with user location, audio and video evidence.
A Deterrent Mode makes it clear to persons in the surrounding area that an Alert has been raised. Anyone who looks at the phone will see that GPS location is being monitored and audio/video evidence uploaded. Phone will display ‘alert raised’.
Stealth mode activates a silent alert with no obvious signs of activation to keep the alert as discreet as possible. The phone will put a wallpaper up to look as though it’s on the home screen.
Other benefits include the following:
Journey feature: Set your start & end destinations before setting off. Your emergency contacts will be notified once you arrive safely at your chosen destination. An alert will be automatically triggered if you don’t arrive at your destination within the time parameters you’ve sent. Every 5 seconds the platform will update your precise location based on your speed & movement activity to identify where you are once an alert has been raised.
Meeting feature: Set designated duration for a meeting & alert emergency contacts if you don’t mark yourself as safe before the time has lapsed. Once the timer expires an alert will be raised automatically, enabling your emergency contacts to pin-point where you are so they can call for help or request an emergency response.
Reports feature: Users can quickly & easily record an incident with supporting photo evidence that is automatically categorised, time stamped and geo tagged then saved to the Hollie Guard server.
Man down feature: Automatically detects if you have a sudden fall or have stopped moving for a period of time.
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
