"The app, called Absher ("Good Tidings" in Arabic), has been in operation for some years. But it has only recently come into attention in English-speaking media following the high-profile case of Rahaf Mohammed, a Saudi teenager who escaped fled the kingdom, finding asylum in Canada after a weeks' long ordeal in Thai limbo." There's more information on this in Insider, Saudi Arabia runs a huge, sinister online database of women that men use to track them and stop them from running away [their headline], which provides a breakdown of the Absher app: "The alert system is one of the main reasons women trying to flee Saudi Arabia get caught, because it tips their guardians off while they can still be apprehended, according to Dr. Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a Saudi refugee who fled to Germany. "

I'll be looking at this in more detail in due course.

Tags: Gender, apps, Saudi Internet