Anti-incest mobile app warns if you're hooking up with a relative

Software engineering students in Iceland have developed a mobile app that can warn users if that attractive person they want to hook up with for the night might be a relative.

 

The app contains what one of the developers described as an "incest prevention alarm" that sounds an alert and issues a text warning, BusinessWeek reported.

 

“When you bump (your mobile devices), it shows your nearest common ancestors. If you bump with someone who’s too closely related, you get an alarm sound and a text warning,” it quoted Arnar Freyr Adalsteinsson, one of the app's three developers as saying.

 

The "bump" is the most talked-about feature of the app as it is "pretty catchy," Adalsteinsson added.

 

But the app works only in Iceland, where there are only 320,000 residents - and almost all trace their ancestry to the island’s 9th century settlers.

 

Also, the app requires users to have an Icelandic social security number to log on.

 

The app gets data from an Icelandic genealogical database called Islendingabok, or Iceland Book, which traces the lineage of the country’s inhabitants.

 

"Icelandic citizens have long been able to use the national database for genealogical research, including access via mobile phone," Businessweek noted.

 

On the other hand, the IslendingaApp also has extra features such as a calendar that reminds them of relatives’ birthdays.

 

The app —available only in Icelandic— can be downloaded from Google Play and requires Android 2.2 and up. — TJD, GMA News