About Soteria

Why Soteria Exists

The systems meant to protect people don't always show up in time. Sometimes help is minutes away when seconds matter. Sometimes there is no one to call. Sometimes the danger is quiet: a walk to your car, a rideshare that feels wrong, a conversation that shifts.

I built Soteria because no one should have to wait for an institution to decide their safety matters. It is not a replacement for emergency services. It is the tool that makes sure someone always knows where you are, and that when it is over, you hold evidence no one can alter or take from you.

This is not surveillance. It is not a weapon. It is a personal safety tool controlled entirely by the person using it. Every recording, every GPS log, every alert is yours: encrypted, exportable, and deletable at any time.

The Name

Soteria is the Greek goddess of safety, preservation, and deliverance from harm. In ancient Greece, she was invoked when people needed protection from dangers they couldn't face alone.

Every product built by Lonia AI is named after a figure from Greek or Roman mythology, women who embodied the qualities the product was designed to deliver. Soteria is your guardian. Your silent witness.

Part of the Lonia AI Family

Soteria is built by Lonia AI, a company founded on three pillars that appear in every product, every tier, from the first line of code: accessibility, compliance, and security.

Lonia AI builds high-trust software that expands access: securely, compliantly, and by design. From climate adaptation to medical billing to accessibility operations, every product serves the people that existing systems have failed.

Built on trust. Designed for everyone.

The Three Pillars, Applied to Soteria

What accessibility, compliance, and security actually mean for a personal safety app.

Accessibility

A safety tool fails if it only works when you are calm and looking at the screen. One tap starts a session in the middle of a fear response. During an active session, Soteria listens for your safe word and other voice triggers, so the app stays usable hands-free and eyes-free. Voice activation outside an active session depends on your device and browser; iOS Safari and most background modes do not support it. Voice activation through Google Assistant and Siri Shortcuts is on our roadmap for the native apps. Alerts arrive as vibration, sound, and on-screen text at once, so a deaf or hard-of-hearing user is never left out. Every screen meets WCAG 2.2 AA, with large touch targets for hands that are shaking.

Compliance

Recording law is not the same in every state, and a person in danger cannot stop to check it. Soteria reads your location by GPS and, in the fourteen all-party consent states, holds recording and runs in silent alert mode on its own, so the record you make is a record you can use. Every session is audit-logged. Transcription carries AI provenance. Deletion is honored within 30 days. A survivor recording under duress needs the law on their side, not waiting to be tripped by it.

Security

Sometimes the threat is the person holding the phone. Soteria assumes the device itself may be taken and searched. Processing happens on-device by default. Cloud backup is opt-in and encrypted in transit and at rest. Authentication is OAuth only, with no password stored anywhere. A stealth disguise and a duress vault mean that even someone forcing you to open the app, or to delete a session, cannot see what is really there.

Who built Soteria

Soteria is built by a survivor, for survivors.

I filed a report through the channels that were supposed to help. I was told to my face that what happened to me didn't happen the way I said it did, and there were attempts to keep me from filing at all. I filed anyway, because I wanted a record no one could erase. That record is part of the reason I'm safe enough today to build this.

Soteria exists so the next person doesn't have to fight that fight just to be believed. Press one button and the evidence is yours: cryptographically signed, locked together in a tamper-evident chain, exportable, deletable. No institution can alter it, lose it, or refuse to write it down. The record is yours from the moment it exists.

That is the entire product. Everything else, the disguise, the duress vault, the silent alert, the hands-free activation, exists to make sure the record gets made even when the person who needs it most can't safely reach for their phone.

I built Soteria because I needed it before it existed. Now it does, and you can use it for free.

Questions? Reach us at admin@lonia.ai.

Why Soteria exists now

As of 2026, the institutional safety net that was supposed to protect women is contracting.

The Office on Violence Against Women is operating under a proposed 30% budget cut. The Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, which funds 1,600 domestic violence shelters, has had its grant processing suspended. Federal funding for women's services dropped 28% in 2023 while demand grew 34%. An estimated 680,000 women and children stand to lose access to lifesaving services in the next fiscal year. Sources: Ms. Magazine; 19th News.

Title IX coverage on college campuses, once the federal backbone of campus sexual assault protections, has been functionally reversed. The Office for Civil Rights resolved zero sexual harassment cases in K-12 schools in 2025. Sources: U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.

This isn't a future concern. This is happening now.

When the institutions that were supposed to catch you are stepping back, you need tools that don't depend on them. A safety witness that works even when no one is funded to dispatch help. An evidence chain that holds up in court even when the prosecutor's office is understaffed. A way to disappear from a platform safely when the system can no longer be trusted.

Soteria is that tool. Built before launch with everything a survivor would need, because survivors can't wait for legislation to catch up.

Your Safety, Your Control

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