Technological development has its bane and boon. On one hand, a feature like auto-correct can make your typing quite efficient but it can also land you in trouble.
Have you ever wondered about the embarrassing consequences of auto-correct? Or maybe sent something else due to auto-correct to your boss? Well, something similar happened in the US when a girl texted her father that she was being stabbed and her father called the police who showed up at her house. What the girl actually wanted to type in was that she was being swabbed.
The incident took place last month in Menasha city of Wisconsin state where according to, The Appleton Post-Crescent, the father of the woman was panicked when he called the police station to report the alleged stabbing of his daughter.
Speaking to Green Bay Press Gazette, police officer Nick Oleszak said that the father indicated that his daughter was being stabbed, possibly by a live-in boyfriend. He then provided the police with an address of his daughter so that they can check on her. The police officer further told the local news portal that they even tried to call her father back and tried to reach out to his daughter but were unable to reach her.
One auto-correct mistake led a team of police officers outside the girl’s apartment where the woman seemed perfectly fine. To everyone’s surprise, the woman informed them that she was getting swabbed for a coronavirus test since she was not feeling well. However, she was not aware that the text that she had sent to her father was auto-corrected to stabbed from swabbed.
We can only imagine the embarrassment caused to the woman and the frustration of police after the reality of the incident unfolded.
With the caution of police, there was no disturbance or hostility at the location where the woman’s boyfriend also lived. However, acting according to the nature of the complaint, the police had to take a team of officers to the reported location. T
he police were expecting a serious situation and were prepared in accordance with the set protocols. However, when it was revealed that it was just an auto-correct fail, Oleszak said that one should always check a text before sending it to authorities to make sure no words have been mistakenly changed.