Smart solutions: A hack that has your back

It’s not every day that one wakes up to an email with ‘I need your help’ in the subject line.

Morning mailers are usually a yawn. That daily newsletter, the five things “you must not miss”, new podcast notification, a bill payment reminder, a delivery alert, they’ve crowded your inbox even before you’ve started your day.

So, this one stood out, more so because the sender was a stranger. Not a trick email, not a scam bait, this was a genuine request for help. A woman from Mumbai had written in, seeking advice and guidance.

A day before the email landed, we had published a ‘Hack of the Day’ on how to get free legal aid through the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) portal. She had seen it. This wasn’t just a tech hack for her.

Practical tech tips offer help in everyday & critical situations

It was a road she had been desperately looking for and had found in an unlikely place — one that could end the cycle of domestic violence she is trapped in. “I need your help,” she wrote, “for a domestic violence case free lawyer.” So we wrote back, explaining the process again and helping her get past a couple of hurdles she hit, like finding her state on the portal and filling up the form. By evening, she had completed the form and submitted it.

The hack had done two things — allowed her to file a plea for help without stepping out of home and assured her of legal remedy for which she would not have to pay.

Since we started ‘Hack of the Day’, published on the first page of Times Nation section Monday to Friday, the responses have surprised us. We conceived it as an espresso shot of technology, ‘a tech-presso’, to help our readers get practical solutions to everyday problems like blocking pesky telemarketing calls, downloading your IT return, knowing your credit score, deleting your Google location history, locking your Aadhaar biometrics, and so on.

We didn’t reinvent the wheel. We merely curated available information but stripped off the jargon and cut the clutter to break it down into three-four simple tests. What we got from our readers in response went well beyond requests for further tips — those roll in daily and we’re happy to help. We heard many personal stories because the tech sits in middle of a problem and a solution.

Problems present themselves differently to different people. For example, you may brush off a marketing call and block the number. Someone else, not so savvy with a phone, may fall into the trap of cybercrime. A reader from Indore reached out when he read our hack on ‘getting your phone into the DND’ – he was sick of calls from numbers he did not recognise on his phone and wanted them to stop. He read our hack but needed some handholding. “Maybe I’m too old to understand the hack,” he joked.

Another hack on filing lost baggage claims with airlines drew responses that showed how fliers get shortchanged by a process that the aviation regulator has not bothered to simplify and airlines take advantage of. One reader said he was aware of the process but had received compensation far lower than the value of his damaged luggage.

The most important thing we heard is that hacks have given our readers direction and agency in an environment where services are increasingly digital and solutions lie buried in creases of web pages. In moments of vulnerability, a small, well-explained piece of information can become a turning point.

Quietly, ‘Hack of the Day’ will continue to do this job.
Select The Times of India as your preferred source on Google Search