I'd say that one of the most emotional days for my entire team was when a potential client called us and told us that they just rescued a teenage girl and prevented her from making a suicide by using our service.

The service itself is extremely simple and does not even work in all cases (due to various limitations). But when it does, it saves time, money and above all lives. When you realise that the girl who has already wrote her goodbye letter and ran away is saved at the top of the cliff... Well, then you know that you are doing at least something right!

What's the service?

@Dittoslash The service allows emergency call operator to send an SMS to the caller. SMS contains a link that, when opened, sends phone's location to the call operator.

The girl in question was hesitating and called the emergency phone number. While talking to her, the operator convinced her to open the link in the SMS. He then dispatched the helicopter unit to the exact location to help her out.

As said, fairly simple but luckily efficient when needed the most.

You know, the problem in most (EU) countries is that geolocation of emergency calls is handled by cell antennas which frequently gives very poor location. Google is now pushing its Android Emergency Location service which will greatly improve this!

@gberginc keep doing simple things.

Pure respect dude/dudett/dudein. Simple app or not this is the reason we dev, literal life changing impact.

Wow. I'm coming to the realization oFwhat that click meant to her...she could have seen the geolocation icon going on. She might have though "oh, shut, they gonna find me now". But at the same time, "I've been tricked into opening this so they can get to me". She could have dropped the phone down. But at the same time...the spark. "Someone actually bothered to create a deceptive trick so they could get to me. Someone took the time to talk to me into open it. Someone is bothering to send a fucking helicopter to get to me." That might surely have delayed the process.

Boy, you made a difference.

I'm glad I've learned of this service. Had I been pushed beyond the limits of urgency to escape existence, hesitated and called a help line, and they asked me to click on a shorthand link in a message, I'd think I was being Phished.

Am I the only one who doesn't like this because of privacy reasons? I mean just a simple sms link and whoever wants you, gets you. Very good if only used for non-malicious cases. But this could easily be misused.

@Numinex the phone (browser) will always ask for permission. I agree, we all understand how users handle permissions, but the service in question is only available to civil protection agencies.

@gberginc That makes me feel safer, thanks.