Kitestring – An Ingenious Solution To Help Online Daters Stay Safe

Every now and then you hear of a website, an app or an extension that restores your faith to the humankind.

I mean – it’s like when people are asked what they would do if they were superheroes, very few actually would use their powers to do good.

And the same applies to brainy IT-people. Many would make websites, apps or start-ups mainly to make money.

Not that we judge – after all, they wouldn’t be able to make money if people didn’t find their creation useful or at least entertaining.

But then someone comes along who does something selfless and brilliant – purely for the sake of making this world a better place and that leaves you totally amazed.

Stephan Boyer – Kitestring Founder

I happened to read this interview with Stephan Boyer, a brilliant young computer science student from the prestigious corridors of MIT.

While waiting for a phone-call from his girlfriend to let him know she had arrived home safely walking home late at night, he realised there was a gap in the market.

Instead of complaining about it – as most of us, ordinary people do – he sat down and came up with Kitestring, a new web service that can make you feel a little safer when staying out late, walking through a dodgy neighbourhood, taking a long trip in your car and also when going for dates with people you’ve only just met online.

How Kitestring Works

So, what is it? First of all, it’s not an app – and that’s good because not everyone has a smartphone but most of us have access to a computer and some kind of mobile phone.

When you walk home alone at night or go on a blind date you make a note of it in Kitestring. If the programme doesn’t hear back from you by certain point, they’ll send you a text.

If everything is OK, you can send them a simple reply back. If you don’t reply, the system alerts your emergency contacts.

Why is this better than other safety-related apps or programmes?

Because most of them require you to DO something in order to send out an alert message. Yet we all know that this might not be possible when you have been attacked or got into an accident. Kitestring however, doesn’t need you to do anything – it’s you NOT doing something that sets things in motion.

True, Kitestring doesn’t track your movements on GPS, therefore you’d be wise to leave a note in the programme with your plans that it can send to your emergency contacts in case you don’t get in touch with them. At the same time it offers you more privacy AND it’s also free to use unlike most GPS apps.

Real life Example

So if you’re going on a date with someone you’ve never met before, it’s easy to just mark it down on Kitestring – “Meeting John/Jill from Match.com (link to profile) in Pizza Express on Main Street at 8 pm.” Kitestring will then check up on you and if you haven’t responded, say, in an hour, it could let your friends know where you were and who you were with.

Otherwise no one else has to know what you’re doing and who you’re seeing!

This is a great service, and even though it’s American you can easily use it worldwide as texting works everywhere.

So we encourage you to give it a try. It won’t exactly keep you safe but it will give you some peace of mind. We could all use more of that.

Visit Kitestring

About the Author

Aet Suvari has been reviewing and writing about the world of online dating since 2008 and the launch of Online Dating Help. A stickler for promoting ethical practices within the UK dating industry she champions the sites that get it right while highlighting those holding it back. You can follow her on Google+