Circle of 6: contact friends if you run into uncomfortable or dangerous situations

The idea behind the Circle of 6 application for Android and iPhone is simple: provide users of the app with options to quickly ask friends they trust for help when they encounter situations that are either uncomfortable for them or outright dangerous.
While it is possible to use your phone directly, this is usually limited to contacting a single friend only, and if that friend is not available at the time, you may be out of time to make other calls or messages.
After you have installed Circle of 6 on your mobile phone, you are asked to add up to six friends from your contacts list to the app. It is not necessary to add that many though, as you can add contacts twice or multiple times in case you do not want to add that many to it.
The app suggests to send out a message to all friends you have added to inform them that they have been added to your fast response list, but that is not mandatory.
Circle of 6 review
Once set up, you can start using the app with a couple of simply taps. First, tap on the circle in the middle of the app to display the options that you have:
- The car icon: "Come and get me. I need help getting home safely".
- The phone icon: "Call and pretend you need me. I need an interruption".
- The message icon: " I need some advice on healthy relationships".
Once you make the selection, the app will try to pinpoint your location automatically (you need GPS enabled for that it appears).
Once done, it will display a message that includes your location and English text that is asking your contacts to help you out.
Here is a video demonstrating the apps' capabilities.
In addition to making available these direct contact options, you also get direct access to "Rape or Secual Assault RAINN" and "Relationship Abuse: Love is Respect" hotlines that you can call directly.
To avoid that all friends that you have added to your circle of six respond at the same time, you can use the application to confirm that you have received help already.
The application has a couple of issues. First, it is only available in English. If your main language is not English, it is awkward to use it, especially if some of your contacts do not speak English at all or only limited.
The hotlines too are only for users from the US (and New Delhi it seems) which has no use whatsoever to users from other countries or regions.
What should happen is that the developers add customization options to the application so that users of it can change the default messages of the app that are used to contact friends, and also the hotlines that are displayed here by default.
A fail-safe mechanism would also be handy. Since you do have to use the app to send out the message, it may not always be possible to do so. An option to hold down a button of your phone, that, when released will send out the message automatically, would help a lot.
It would also be great if the "call for help" icons would be displayed directly, as it will save you another tap on the phone and there is really no reason why the actions are not displayed immediately.
Verdict
Circle of 6 is a promising application. If you are living in the US or another supported region or country, it may be a great application for you. People from other countries may want to wait until the app is localized before they start to use it.
Advertisement
Uhh, this has already been possible – I am not sure how but remember my brother telling me about it. I’m not a whatsapp user so not sure of the specifics, but something about sending the image as a file and somehow bypassing the default compression settings that are applied to inbound photos.
He has also used this to share movies to whatsapp groups, and files 1Gb+.
Like I said, I never used whatsapp, but I know 100% this isn’t a “brand new feature”, my brother literally showed me him doing it, like… 5 months ago?
Martin, what happened to those: 12 Comments (https://www.ghacks.net/chatgpt-gets-schooled-by-princeton-university/#comments). Is there a specific justifiable reason why they were deleted?
Hmm, it looks like the gHacks website database is faulty, and not populating threads with their relevant cosponsoring posts.
The page on ghacks this is on represents the best of why it has become so worthless, fill of click-bait junk that it’s about to be deleted from my ‘daily reads’.
It’s really like “Press Release as re-written by some d*ck for clicks…poorly.” And the subjects are laughable. Can’t wait for “How to search for files on Windows”.
> The page on ghacks this is on represents the best of why it has become so worthless, fill of click-bait junk…
Sadly, I have to agree.
Only Martin and Ashwin are worth subscribing to.
Especially Emre Çitak and Shaun are the worst ones.
If ghacks.net intended “Clickbait”, it would mark the end of Ghacks Technology News.
Ghacks doesn’t need crappy clickbaits. Clearly separate articles from newer authors (perhaps AIs and external sales person or external advertising man) as just “Advertisements”!
We, the subscribers of Ghacks, urge Martin to make a decision.
because nevermore wants to “monetize” on every aspect of human life…
“Threads” is like the Walmart of Social Media.
How hard can it be to clone a twitter version of that as well? They’re slow.
Yes, why not mention how large the HD files can be?
Why, not mention what version of WhatsApp is needed?
These omissions make the article feel so bare. If not complete.
Sorry posted on the wrong page.
such a long article for such a simple matter. Worthless article ! waste of time
I already do this by attaching them via the ‘Document’ option.
I don’t know what’s going on here at Ghacks but it’s obvious that something is broken, comments are being mixed whatever the article, I am unable to find some of my later posts neither. :S
Quoting the article,
“As users gain popularity, the value of their tokens may increase, allowing investors to reap rewards.”
Besides, beyond the thrill and privacy risks or not, the point is to know how you gain popularity, be it on social sites as everywhere in life. Is it by being authentic, by remaining faithful to ourselves or is it to have this particular skill which is to understand what a majority likes, just like politicians, those who’d deny to the maximum extent compatible with their ideological partnership, in order to grab as many of the voters they can?
I see the very concept of this Friend.tech as unhealthy, propagating what is already an increasing flaw : the quest for fame. I won’t be the only one to count himself out, definitely.
@John G. is right : my comment was posted on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/23/what-is-friend-tech/] and it appears there but as well here at [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/08/how-to-follow-everyone-on-threads/]
This has been lasting for several days. Fix it or at least provide some explanations if you don’t mind.
> Google Chrome is following in Safari’s footsteps by introducing a new feature that allows users to move the Chrome address bar to the bottom of the screen, enhancing user accessibility and interaction.
Firefox did this long before Safari.
Basically they’ll do anything except fair royalties.