being swarmed by criminalsimagecreditbrian x chenfor amazon this may not be a bad thing as it may help sell more ring doorbells but for the rest of us a 30day view may overstate what a neighborhoods crime level looks like day to dayso i recommend setting the filter on such apps to look at content posted over the last day only when i changed that setting the number of crime postings in my neighborhood dropped to zero it was a useful reminder that the number of daily incidents is low a representative for amazons ring did not comment on the suggestion that the neighbors app created the impression that a neighborhood was more dangerous in order to sell doorbells however the company noted that not everything posted to neighbors was dangerous people could also find information about lost pets and updates about street closings for examplegraze in moderationdo you really need a constant update on crime news unless you work in law enforcement the answer is probably not so treat crime news as you would any type of media check the apps when doing so may actually be productive and healthy if crime news makes you stressful dont look at the apps late at night before bed and disable the constant notifications and emailsthats what i did with the citizen app after using it for a day i disabled notifications so that i couldnt be alerted about every nearby crime in progress instead i checked the app only when it made the most sense this week when stopped at a red light i saw two men fighting at a gas station i clicked on the citizen app which showed that the altercation had already been reported to the police so instead of pulling over and calling 911 i moved onresist dwelling on the negativemany people have a negative bias we gravitate toward reading negative news stories and when something bad happens we are more likely to talk about it than when something good happenskeep that in mind when perusing neighborhood networking apps the general news feed on nextdoor shows an array of posts on topics like lost pets used furniture for sale a handymans offer of services and occasionally a crime the crimerelated posts may be all you remember but they are rare only 4 percent of posts on nextdoor are related to crime and safety said sarah friar the companys chief executive if you spend more time in the overall feed and ask yourself what do i hear in here 96 percent of all the posts are about other things she saidare you the productbecause many of these neighborhoodwatch apps are free you have to wonder what they are doing with your data when tech products cost you nothing companies often make money in other ways like sharing data about you with advertisersnextdoor for example makes money from advertising but the company builds in several privacy layers its privacy policy says it does not share personal data with advertisers