Debunking the Myths of Mobile Safety Apps in Real Estate

In a discussion about realtor safety mobile apps, Beth and Rob express their skepticism about the effectiveness of these tools. Safety starts with the individual, not with a gadget or app. 

There are limitations with safety apps, such as the delay in response time and the potential for false alarms. And the nature of violent attacks is speed and unpredictability. Safety apps don’t provide adequate protection. 

Education and awareness are the two most important tools you can carry when it comes to your personal safety.

 
Listen For
1:12 Personal Responsibility Over Gadgets for Safety
6:04 Limitations and False Security of Safety Apps
9:47 Challenges in Responding to Safety Alerts
14:14 Rapid Nature of Violent Attacks

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Transcript

Beth Andress (00:00):

It just doesn't logistically work for me. Rob, I don't think that getting a message that says, Hey, Rob's in trouble, is any form of being able to keep you safe.

Rob Andress (00:26):

Today We want to talk about safety apps, realtor safety apps, and I think, Beth, before we get going, I just want to let everyone know that these are our opinions. This is my opinion, this is your opinion of safety apps and we're not specifically going to target any manufacturer of safety apps or anything like that, but we're going to just talk about the reality of what a realtor safety app is and does it really keep you safe? So you know what, with that, Beth, let's kind of get going on realtor safety apps if we can.

Beth Andress (01:12):

Sure. And Rob you and I know that there really isn't anything that can 100% quote keep you safe. Self-defense and safety, the ownership of that is on you, not on a gadget, not on an app, not on a protocol. Nothing. It all has to do with you.

Rob Andress (01:42):

Well, you're a hundred percent right. I mean there's no question about that. Safety has to start with us. And I think oftentimes what happens is we kind of get caught up with this really slick, cool kind of marketing. We see something that's really neat, that's something that's new and somebody sells us something saying, you know what? You can wear this on your person or you can download our app on your phone. Or this is a jewelry piece that imitates a piece of jewelry. You can wear it on your wrist or on your belt, on your waist, or you can carry an individual single unit inside of your purse. And these are going to keep you safe. If you run into a problem, you can open your phone, you can activate the realtor safety app, you can dig through your purse, pull out the individual unit and you can activate it.

(02:50):

Or you can tap the wearable safety app three times and it will activate and notify people. Or you know what? You can, if you have the newest and latest, greatest frigging iPhone, you can hit the side button on the iPhone three times and the bat signals up. You know what? And it's marketing and I get it, and I get that the majority of real estate professionals don't work in the world that you and I work in. They don't understand in. Some don't want to accept the reality of the high level of deception that occurs in these targeting and these attacks against both male and female realtors. And the industry itself sometimes doesn't understand that. Then there's manufacturers who produce product and they label it a realtor safety app and they don't get it either. They don't understand it either.

Beth Andress (04:18):

All of a sudden, I'm reminded of one session that we did, and I can picture the room, I can picture the lady that I'm going to talk to you about. And I can't remember exactly where it was, whether it was Oshawa, whether it was maybe Orangeville, I can't remember what board we were at. And we were having a discussion about cell phones and safety apps. And this one lady was adamant, she said, I take this with me on every showing everywhere I go, I keep it in my purse and I know it will help me if I ever need it to. And so we asked her to show it to us because we didn't recognize the name brand. And there was a couple of other realtors in the room that were interested. So she said, well, I have it right here. And she opened up her purse and in order to get this safety gadget out, she dug through her purse for literally 90 seconds and then she found it at the bottom of her purse and she pulled it out and she said, well, if I'm ever in trouble, I just activate it like this.

(05:23):

And she pushed the button and this alarm went off. It was like a tiny siren that went off. And rob everybody in the room laughed. The realtors all laughed because we were halfway through our session. And by that point they knew that that siren going off was not audible to anybody but her or the predator. And they knew that there was no safety involved in setting off a siren for hoping that somebody's going to hear it and answer a call for help. It just doesn't work that way.

Rob Andress (06:04):

Well, you know what? So we understand now that there's audibles, there's ones that set off these beep beep beep per these simulated sirens. Another form of them are ones apps that we can download on our phone. And there's multiple different forms of these, but I want to kind of narrow down on one during this part of our talk. And that's one where you have a sense that something's going wrong on an appointment, that you have this lead up that or we want to believe we have that we can identify this, that we can have time to actually associate this behavior that we're about to be injured or attacked by this individual. And on this app, we get to open our phone, we get to take time to open the security passcode on our phone. We get to take time now to search for the realtor safety app.

(07:13):

We get time to activate the realtor safety app and then we get time to send a message to somebody. That's bullshit. That doesn't go down that way. And there's others. And in the industry, the developers of these apps are getting better, but they haven't got it yet. There's now apps that you can carry on your phone that if somebody contacts me, if I live in the US, I can do a search on them. And if they are in some type A criminal registrar, I'll get feedback on that. If they are, if they've been convicted and done jail time and other ones, I can have an online search background done on them and then I can send a message to them asking them to send photographs to me. And that's better. That's better. But it's not there yet.

Beth Andress (08:30):

I was going to say, let's talk about what happens when you activate, for example, that SOS button on the side of your iPhone that you mentioned, you activate that button and it calls somebody of your choice.

Rob Andress (08:46):

Yeah. Well, a good majority of them are. You can set up for two to three messages being set out, and I think iPhone sends one directly to a very specific organization. But let's talk about that. And I want your opinion because I mean I think I know your opinion, but if I was a, well, I am a realtor, but I don't use safety apps. But if I did have a safety app and I put your name in and your number and you got a text message with a location of where I was, and that message said to you, Rob is in trouble, he needs help. And you open this up and through this GEOME tag, you find out I am on 1, 2, 3 anywhere street in the middle of Nowheresville.

Beth Andress (09:47):

Well, so the first thing that I'm going to think when I get that message is this true message or is this by accident similar to a pocket dial? Is Rob really activating this because he's in trouble or is it a mistake? That's the first thing I'm going to think. And then when I get the location, I'm going to look at it and I'm going to think, well, where is that? It gives me coordinates, it gives me an address. Is that where his showing was? Is that where he's supposed to be? Do I know what time he was supposed to be there? Will that help me figure out if this is a real, are you in trouble or a fake? I'm in trouble. I think the next thing that I would do is I would probably call you, I really probably would pick up my phone and call you. Now, I might hesitate to do that because I don't want to interrupt you when you're with your clients. Technically I know that you ignore your phone when you're doing a showing anyways so that you can stay focused on what you're doing for many reasons.

(10:57):

And then I would ponder a little bit and then I would think, okay, well maybe I should call the police because that's our protocol 9 1 1 or the police. So I'm going to make that call and I'm going to try to explain what's happened here. I got an alert from my husband's phone that he is in trouble and this is where he is, but he didn't say anything. He didn't speak to me. I just got this notification. And what I know right now is with the limited amount of resources that are available through 9 1 1 or through local police being dispatched, they would probably regard that similar to a pocket dial or a hangup call on nine one one, they're not going to get in their police cars, even if they're available and go screaming to that location with sirens on and red lights going to see what might actually be going on 20 minutes away.

(12:03):

It just doesn't make sense. It just doesn't happen that way. So if you didn't answer your phone when I called you, what am I going to do? Maybe I might get in my car and kind of go there and see, is your car there? Is everything okay? Does it look normal? Would I wait outside for you? I don't know what I would do. I really don't know what would I do? It's just not an easy thing to follow through on when you get one of those messages. And I think everybody would be the same. I dunno, I think maybe some husbands would jump in their car and go racing towards that location to make sure their spouse is okay. I think maybe some females would do that as well if they were able. But what if I'm at work and I get that message and I can't respond, I'm going to call. It just doesn't logistically work for me, Rob, I don't think that getting a message that says, Hey, Rob's in trouble, is any form of being able to keep you safe.

Rob Andress (13:07):

Well, here's the reality. It's the lack of the response to that's what it is. That's what does it. And we don't understand that. We think that if I hit this thing, when are people going to show up? Nobody's going to get there until this is over and this is done. Maybe you've been robbed. If you're a smart individual, you hand the resources over that this individual wants and you give them what they want and you're probably going to be okay. But if this is a process predator attack or an attack that you've experienced from someone who suffers a personality disorder or high anxiety issues or PTSD or some kind of other violent personality disorder, this is over. You're injured, nobody's going to be there to help you.

Beth Andress (14:14):

And those ambush attacks happen so fast that you don't have time to react. You don't have time to push a button. Your brain doesn't even go there. And let's be really honest about that. We've had people tell us they don't even remember the number for 9 1 1 when this stuff happens.

Rob Andress (14:33):

Well, that's the reality of the human fear response. I think a lot of times when we use these things or we believe in carrying them, I think this falls into, again, are ego confusing, your ability in what they are. And you mentioned about the speed of these things. I mean, these attacks will break down in under three one hundredths of a second. I mean, we've seen this on closed circuit cameras of realtors being attacked and how fast it happens and how deception is used to get close to the realtor in this industry. We believe that we have to be close to people in order to build trust and relationships with them. And that's the farthest thing of the truth. I mean, it's the farthest thing. And when we start relying on a product that's marketed as a realtor safety app that does nothing for our safety, frankly, some of them may even expose you to higher violence within the occurrence because of what the individual will witness you trying to do or pull off.

Beth Andress (15:55):

And that's our opinion, Rob, based on what we know about the psychology of violence and how these violent attacks occur. And I know that people are out there trying to find these things that will keep them safe. And I commend the industry for trying to provide something to keep these people safe and for the people who are looking for something to keep them safe. If we could couple the education of the threat behaviors of what you should do if you can remove yourself, go outside in your car and then activate device or your app once you are safe, but that false sense of security of I'm going to be able to push this button on my phone. And again, that bat signal goes up and the cavalry comes running. It's really a bit of a false sense of security that we just don't like to promote in our opinion.

Rob Andress (17:10):

Most absolutely is. And you know what? I'm just thinking about something here as we're talking and what I want to get my thoughts on this, and I want to, for all the brainiac people out there who develop this kind of stuff and these cool things, and they market these as safety apps, my opinion is not one of someone who thinks this will work. My opinion is not of someone who thinks this is how violence against the real estate professional happens. My opinion is not one of, I think this might keep somebody safe, so I'm just going to throw some things out there. Wouldn't it be frigging amazing if there was some kind of app that if I received a phone call from John Smith, I'm just going to throw John Smith out there. I know there's millions of John Smiths out there, so don't take any offense to this, John, but I get a phone call from John Smith and I asked John on the phone and I say, Hey, that's great.

(18:34):

We can do that. Can I get your address, John? And John gives me his address and I get my app and I punch in his name and I punch in his address and I load his phone number and I can get not only a search on his past criminal convictions, but what if we could sort of get something that's similar to, I don't know, I think it's like AIP stuff that gives the whole history background. And I know I'm lunging out there. I know I'm lunging out there, but that's what we need. That's what we need. What past history arrests? And the thing that comes to mind here, Beth, is the phone call we get from a realtor out of Alberta who Googles somebody because she's had a really weird experience with him and finds out that the guy is using his first name as his middle and his middle name is his first, and he's got an outstanding warrant in a different province in Canada for some horrendous frigging crimes. But that's what we need. And I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to get there. And even that doesn't keep us safe, does it? No.

Beth Andress (20:04):

I mean, I know that you're not going to be able to get that information on somebody unless they've provided it voluntarily to some kind of a database that they're in, but even then it's provided by them. But what about this, Rob, what about a challenge to a realtor safety app company to come to us and let's develop something that we think might work. Let's do it.

Rob Andress (20:27):

Do you think anyone's going to be brave enough to come to work with us?

Beth Andress (20:33):

I don't know. Let's see.

Rob Andress (20:36):

 I think that's amazing. And it's important. I mean, it's important that the real estate professional have access to something to at least increase their awareness and understanding of who it is their meeting. And again, I know in Juneau that even that is not going to keep you 100% safe. We know that only about 10% of crimes that happen against the professional is reported. And we understand why. I mean, it's really clear as to why. We also understand that many of these individuals target realtors, they're hunters and they move from one realtor to the next to the, until they are successful at fulfilling, either they're their resource needs or their need of dominance and control, but they learn right as they're going along through these processes. So I mean, the app itself, even the most ultimate app isn't a hundred percent going to be a hundred percent safe.

(22:02):

I mean, we still get down to have to understand those behaviors, those signs, our intuition, which we never listen to. But intuition is such an important thing. But I would love to see an organization really step up to the plate and develop something based on fact and reality, not on what we think. And if that happened, it would be the most empowering device going. And in Canada, there's, I think it's close to 180,000 realtors. I don't know what it is in the us it's probably close to a million. But look at the market that they would have for developing the ultimate true realtor safety device that provides information on clients we have yet to meet. And I think it would be amazing.

Beth Andress (23:14):

Yep. I agree. So let's wrap this up by saying that you know what your safety starts with. You Just remember that just because you've been on several appointments with these prospects, understand that they're still strangers. Understand that you still need to be able to identify the threat behaviors, understand that ambush attacks happen in three, one hundredths of a second. Understand how deception works. You need that base of education before any gadget or promotional item in order to keep you safe. Your safety starts with you.

Rob Andress (23:57):

Yeah, a hundred percent. And you know what? With that, I want to thank you for listening to our podcast today. And if you find it of value, please leave us a rating because ratings are really important to us. And if you think this may help someone else that within the industry, please send them a link to our podcast channel so they can have a listen to it as well. And of course, always, I want to thank you, Beth, for being an amazing host, and I want to thank Doug, our producer from Stories and Strategies for always putting on an amazing program for you to listen to. And thanks for joining us, and please always be safe and have a very, very prosperous day.