Citizen Protect Officially Launches Today

By Andrew Frame, Citizen CEO

Citizen was founded five years ago to make the world a safer place. Now, we’ve delivered over 9 billion safety alerts, empowering our Citizen community of more than 8 million users with information about what’s happening around them so they can stay safe. Every day, we see our community use the app in powerful and incredible ways, from helping neighbors escape from structure fires to coming together to help reunite missing children and elderly loved ones safely with their families. Moments like this inspire the Citizen team to continue to build and scale innovative, next-generation safety technology and features that make a difference in the lives of our users.

Historically, our community has relied on Citizen exclusively for providing them with real-time, safety-critical information. Until now.

Today, we are officially launching Citizen Protect, our on-demand, personalized, mobile protection subscription that gives you 24/7 access to Citizen’s team of highly trained Protect Agents. With the launch of Protect, Citizen now has your back and is here to provide you with the help you need, whenever you need it.

We’re proud to bring personal safety into the 21st century with Protect and have learned a great deal from our nearly 100,000 Protect beta users. Beginning today, if you live in the United States and have the Citizen app, you can subscribe to Protect for $19.99 per month and start enjoying more peace of mind.

The Power Of Citizen’s Protect Agents

Our Protect Agents are safety experts who are equipped to help in a variety of stressful or uncertain situations. They personalize your experience to your situation. Our Protect Agents have already responded to hundreds of thousands of situations. Depending on what your situation is, Protect Agents can:

• Send emergency responders to your exact location: If you’re in need of emergency assistance, Protect Agents can escalate to 911 on your behalf no matter where you are in the US. Protect Agents have already connected hundreds of Protect subscribers with 911. If you share your location with Citizen Protect, Agents can live monitor your location, provide first responders, and help them arrive more quickly by guiding them to your exact location. Protect Agents will always continue to monitor you while you wait for help to arrive.
• Notify your loved ones: You can ask your Protect Agent to notify your designated emergency contacts of your situation if you’re not able to yourself. Protect Agents can keep them updated and let them know when you are safe.
• Guide you to a safe place: If you’re experiencing an issue or are feeling unsafe or unwell, our Protect Agents can guide you to a safe location or help nearby. Protect Agents have, for example, navigated Protect subscribers to the nearest cooling stations during major heat waves.
• Just give you peace of mind: You don’t have to be experiencing an emergency to connect with a Protect Agent. That’s the beauty of Protect. Whether you enjoy nightly strolls alone or are having first date jitters, Protect Agents can simply stay connected with you and monitor you until you’re ready to end your session.
• Alert nearby Citizen users: If your situation meets our alert criteria, Protect Agents will create an alert and notify all nearby Citizen users and Protect subscribers. Harnessing the power of Citizen’s safety network through Protect-generated alerts has helped dozens of families reunite with their missing loved ones and pets.

Connecting To A Protect Agent

You can be connected with a Protect Agent when you need them by starting a session directly in the Citizen app or, if you just want peace of mind when you’re alone, you can enable Protect Mode’s AI-powered live monitoring:

• Get Agent button: Simply tap the Get Agent button on the Citizen home screen to immediately connect with a Protect Agent through a video, audio-only or text-only experience. Audio and text-only communication allows you to discreetly signal help in difficult situations where you may not want to be seen calling 911.
• Protect Mode: When you toggle Protect Mode to On, you can enable Shake for Agent, Distress Detection or both to be discreetly connected with a Protect Agent.
• When Shake for Agent is enabled, just shake your phone two or more times to receive a prompt to be connected.
• When Distress Detection is enabled, your audio is monitored by our AI-powered technology which identifies sounds that indicate trouble, like a scream for example. When a distress signal is identified, you will be asked if you’d like to be connected with a Protect Agent. And if you don’t respond within 10 seconds, you’ll be automatically connected just in case you’re experiencing an emergency. At launch, Protect Mode is only available on iOS. We’ll be adding additional functionality for Android soon.

We’re grateful for the encouraging feedback we’ve received from our many Protect beta users. Thank you for helping shape the Protect experience we’re launching today. We’re just getting started.

At Citizen, we continue to work tirelessly to provide you with cutting-edge mobile safety products and technologies to keep you and your loved ones safe. If you’re interested in trying Citizen Protect, you can start a 30-day free trial here.