Círculo (En Círculo)

Summary

Círculo is the privacy-hardened successor to Circle of 6, built for journalists, activists and human rights defenders — and grounded in the experience and concerns of the women who occupy central roles in journalism, social movements and human-rights defence. It keeps Circle of 6’s core idea — a self-chosen network of six trusted peers — but rebuilds it for high-risk work: members agree on safety protocols, form a social agreement about what they need from each other, then use the app to ask for help, share status, and send encrypted location updates that go only to their circle.

Its design centre is wellbeing and digital safety: encrypted conversations, no email or phone number required to sign up, lock and disguise features, no histories stored, and location that is encrypted and never tracked or exposed by the app. The makers are explicit that the app does not provide emergency response — it helps a person inform their community and signal what they need, and it requires an internet connection. By reducing isolation it aims to mitigate the burnout, trauma and self-censorship common in these fields.

Lineage

SucceedsCircle of 6
- Same six-peer “circle” model, re-engineered for journalists and human-rights defenders with strong privacy guarantees.

Safety features

ImplementsTrusted Network
- Six trusted peers with agreed protocols and a social agreement.
ImplementsPanic Button
- Send alerts “big and small” to the circle.
ImplementsLocation Sharing
- Encrypted, circle-only location; the app does not track or expose it.
ImplementsDiscreet Access
- Lock-and-disguise features; no account identifiers; no stored histories.

Stance

PrioritisesPrivacy and Safety
- No email/phone, end-to-end encryption, open-source.
Informed byBystander Intervention
- “Safety starts with community.”

Addresses

AddressesGender-Based Violence
- Harassment and violence targeting women journalists, activists and HRDs.

Connections

Instance ofPersonal Safety Apps
Related toCircle of 6

Sources

Tags: #app #journalists #human-rights #privacy #open-source

Backlinks

Linked Pages

circle-of-6

Circle of 6

Tech 4 Good (Nancy Schwartzman, Christine Corbett Moran, Thomas Cabus) · iOS (Feb 2012) / Android (Sept 2012) · Free · Active (founding lead developer departed 2015)

Summary

Circle of 6 is a bystander-style personal-safety app for preventing dating violence and sexual assault, built on the premise that the fastest help is often a trusted friend. A user picks six people for their “circle”; from then on, two taps sends those contacts a pre-set message together with the user’s GPS location — for example “come and get me,” “call and interrupt me,” or a request for advice. The app also links directly to reputable domestic-violence and national hotlines, and originally invited contacts to take a Facebook pledge to help stop violence before it happens.

It was co-created by filmmaker and activist Nancy Schwartzman with developer Christine Corbett Moran (lead developer / CTO until 2015) and Thomas Cabus, under the umbrella “Tech 4 Good.” A university edition, Circle of 6 U, customised the trusted-resource links per campus; the team ran a two-year pilot with colleges including Williams. The app reported over 15,000 downloads within its first months and wide press coverage.

Recognition

WonApps Against Abuse Challenge
- Co-winner with On Watch of the White House / HHS challenge, announced November 2011.

Safety features

ImplementsTrusted Network
- Exactly six pre-chosen contacts — small, intimate, low-friction.
ImplementsPanic Button
- Two taps to send a pre-set message.
ImplementsLocation Sharing
- GPS location attached to the alert.

personal-safety-apps

Personal Safety Apps

Personal safety apps are mobile applications that help a user summon help, share their whereabouts, or deter harm. Most combine a Panic Button, Location Sharing, and a Trusted Network, and many connect to Crisis Hotlines and Resources. They span two broad postures: alarm-and-summon tools aimed at acute danger, and network-and-intervene tools rooted in Bystander Intervention that aim to prevent harm before it escalates.

The central design tension is Privacy and Safety: the same capabilities that protect (continuous location, contact lists, always-on microphones) can be turned against a user — see Location Tracking Abuse and Stalkerware — so survivor-facing tools must be weighed with Trauma-Informed Design in mind.

In this vault

Member apps assert instance_of::[[Personal Safety Apps]]; see backlinks.

gender-based-violence

Gender-Based Violence

Gender-based violence (GBV) is violence directed at a person because of their gender, or that affects one gender disproportionately. It is the umbrella over Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Violence, Stalking and Coercive Control — the harms the tools and resources in this vault aim to prevent, interrupt, document or respond to.

In this vault

IncludesIntimate Partner Violence
IncludesSexual Violence
IncludesCoercive Control
IncludesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence

bystander-intervention

Bystander Intervention

Bystander intervention is a violence-prevention approach that equips the people around a potential victim — friends, peers, colleagues, communities — to notice, interrupt and prevent harm before it occurs, rather than placing the whole burden on the person at risk. In safety tech it shows up as tools that lower the friction of reaching trusted people: Circle of 6, Círculo, On Watch, and the federal Apps Against Abuse Challenge that promoted them were all explicitly bystander- and prevention-oriented.

Insight Exchange’s Responders Lab extends the idea beyond the crisis moment, framing everyone as an ongoing “responder” whose interactions matter.

In this vault

PreventsGender-Based Violence
Related toTrusted Network

privacy-and-safety

Privacy and Safety

Privacy and safety are often treated as the same goal in anti-violence technology, but for a Victim-Survivor they pull in opposite directions and must be balanced deliberately. The data that makes a safety tool useful — real-time Location Sharing, cloud backups, message logs kept as Evidence Documentation — is exactly the data an abuser will try to reach if they retain access to a device, account, or family plan. NNEDV’s Safety Net Project frames technology safety as protecting “safety, privacy, accessibility, and civil rights” together, and stresses that the burden should fall on holding perpetrators accountable, not solely on survivors restricting themselves. Yet practical safety planning still requires hard privacy choices: which device is trustworthy, which accounts are compromised, and what should never be stored where an abuser can find it.

This is why every safety app sits in tension here. A design that collects rich location history to “build evidence” also builds a honeypot that Stalkerware or a coercive partner can exploit, and the Datafication of MeToo critique shows how such collection can become extraction rather than protection. Privacy-protective alternatives respond with data minimisation, on-device storage, encryption, and Discreet Access, and safety guidance cautions that even removing monitoring can escalate danger if an abuser feels they’ve “lost control.” Getting this balance right is the central problem of Survivor-Centered Design and Trauma-Informed Design.

In this vault

Tension withPersonal Safety Apps
Threatened byStalkerware
Related toDiscreet Access
Related toSurvivor-Centered Design

Sources

discreet-access

Discreet Access

Discreet access is the cluster of UX patterns that let a person reach safety tools without an abuser, bystander, or a monitored device noticing. In practice this means disguised or “cloaked” launchers (apps that present as a news reader or weather app), silent or stealth alerting that fires an SOS while an innocuous home screen stays on display, fake-call screens that fabricate an excuse to leave a room, hidden trigger gestures (e.g. a triple-tap on the screen edge), and a deliberate refusal to store call logs or alert history that could later be discovered. Some pilots go further and ship with no app name and no obvious icon, sending an in-app call to police without the user having to speak. These choices assume the threat model of Tech-Enabled Abuse and Coercive Control: that the device itself may be surveilled, and that being seen seeking help is its own danger.

Discreet access is a concrete expression of Trauma-Informed Design — control left with the user, defaults that fail safe — and it is a defensive response to Stalkerware and Location Tracking Abuse. It overlaps with the Panic Button (the quietest possible trigger) and with quick-exit affordances that scrub a screen instantly. The same cloaking that protects a Victim-Survivor can, however, create a Privacy and Safety tension: hidden tools are harder to audit, and a feature designed to evade an abuser can resemble the very disguise techniques abusers use, so the design must center the survivor’s own assessment of risk.

In this vault

Part ofTrauma-Informed Design
Protects againstStalkerware
Related toPanic Button
Tension withPrivacy and Safety

Sources

https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/24/domestic-violence-app/
https://violencereductionalliance.co.uk/hollie-guard/
https://www.techsafety.org/spyware-and-stalkerware-phone-surveillance

Tags: #concept #ux #safety

location-sharing

Location Sharing

Location sharing transmits a user’s real-time or on-demand GPS position to chosen recipients — the feature that lets a Panic Button mean “come and get me, here.” It is one of the most protective capabilities in safety tech and one of the most dangerous: the same mechanism, in the hands of an abuser, becomes Location Tracking Abuse. Privacy-focused tools such as Círculo respond by encrypting location and sending it only to a Trusted Network, never tracking or exposing it.

In this vault

panic-button

Panic Button

A panic button (or SOS trigger) is the central primitive of most Personal Safety Apps: a single fast action — a screen tap, a hardware-button sequence, a voice command, or a wearable press — that raises an alarm and usually shares the user’s whereabouts with a Trusted Network or emergency dispatch. Design tensions include speed versus accidental triggering, and visibility versus the need for discreet activation under threat.

In this vault

Part ofPersonal Safety Apps
Paired withLocation Sharing

trusted-network

Trusted Network

A trusted network is the set of people a user pre-selects to receive alerts, check-ins and location from a safety app — Circle of 6’s and Círculo’s “circle” of six, On Watch’s “support network.” The design choices that matter are who can be added, how easily the list can be changed under duress, and whether contacts can actually help in time. It is the connective tissue that makes Bystander Intervention work in software.

In this vault

Part ofPersonal Safety Apps
EnablesBystander Intervention