App warns you when you enter an area where sex crimes have been committed

You are about to take a shortcut via a again alley when out of the blue your telephone beeps — a notification pops up warning you that a intercourse crime has been dedicated there.

That is what one prefecture in Japan is doing with its new "Mimamotchi" app.

The app, which makes use of GPS to trace the consumer's places, mechanically sends info when customers enter areas the place intercourse crimes have been logged.

It's the first app in Japan designed to assist shield younger ladies and youngsters from sexual predators, Fukuoka's prefectural police informed the Asahi Shimbun.

Customers can even select to slender down the sensitivity from their location, from a variety of 5 km (three.1 miles) to 100 meters (328 ft).

The app exhibits the place totally different intercourse crimes — from forcible indecency to groping — have occurred on a map. Areas with a better focus of intercourse crimes are proven in purple, permitting customers to have the ability to simply spot and keep away from probably harmful places.

The Mimamotchi additionally has an alarm function, with customers capable of set off a warning beep with only a faucet on display, and to name 110 for police.

The app, which is accessible free of charge throughout Apple and Android, is for now solely out there throughout the Fukuoka prefecture. 

It has nevertheless, already acquired some excessive critiques on the Google Play retailer.

"I have been ready for an app like this," stated one consumer.

"It is a fantastic app. All ladies in Fukuoka ought to obtain it," one other reviewer stated.

One official added that the app doesn't solely work to guard customers, but in addition to intensify crime consciousness. 

"Many individuals are likely to look on intercourse crimes as someone else's drawback, however we would like them to study data of crimes so they are going to be extra conscious of crime prevention," Masako Tsuru, an inspector who helped develop the app, stated.

Tsuru added that police had additionally labored with highschool and college college students to crowdsource concepts. 

There have been 435 cases of sexual offences in Fukuoka Prefecture final yr, the sixth highest degree nationwide, in line with the Nikkei.