I live in New Hampshire and Maine was so terrible with their amber/safety alerts that I shut them off entirely on my phone. I remember getting woken up at 2 or 3am for an abducted child, they knew it was a parent. Later they sent out an ‘extreme’ (whatever the highest level is) threat to human life after a road rage incident where 1 guy shot another guy at an intersection. I was 150 miles away. That is a heck of a radius to set for one guy with a pistol. They ought to save extreme for when a meteor is headed for us or something.

Sounds like the system needs tweaking to be less disruptive. Maybe with some actual rules on usage and reach? Especially restrictions on alerts during sleeping hours

Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of “WELL WHY DIDN’T THEY ISSUE AN AMBER ALERT???” when a kid is found dead.

this kinda reminds me of a security back and forth I had recently and tech security things in general. You get the technically this can be used like this and as you say no one wants to be the one against it if an incident ever happens.

How’d you turn yours off? They use a protocol on the phones that are designed so the user is unable to turn them off. Do you use a custom OS? -Or do you mean that you shut your entire phone off?

On my Pixel, stock os:

• settings
• safety & emergency
• wireless emergency alerts

Thank You for posting that. This is all new information to me. When last I checked a few years ago no such menu existed.

Iphone. Settings > Notifications > Government Alerts

Shut mine off the first time it warned me in the middle of the night about something happening 400 miles away.

Police gotta stop crying wolf.

Police gotta stop crying wolf.

Lol reminds me of when Texas had a blue alert.

Reminds me of 2001 to 2008 when we had national “terror alerts” each day

Damn, I don’t remember that. Sounds wild tho.

I remember a great deal of jokes about the ‘color’ of the day.

Í live in Fort Worth, why the hell do I get amber alerts for Houston!? That’s a 6 hour drive at least…

Howdy neighborino

“Here’s Jose Flanders!”

“Buenos ding dong diddly Diaz senor!”

Amber alerts may not come out immediately when a child disappears. It could be hours later. It’s better that people are aware of a beat up red Toyota Camry that is expected to be transporting and abducted child than not.

The article says if a child is harmed, it usually happens within the first three hours.

Ok? Does that mean we should stop searching after 3 hours?

Yea, because after 3 hours it’s just too hard to find them, they could be anywhere. Only if we could find a way to get the help of the public or something. Many eyes are better than one.

By the time you can verify the child is in danger odds are more than 3 hours have passed.

Many claims of child endangerment are really a parent (or grand parent) trying to mess with their EX who currently has custody of the child. The child is not in danger at all. The system needs to spend time verifying that the report is real before bothering thousands (or likely millions) of people.

Yep, which is why I don’t think that 6 hours away is necessarily too far for an amber alert. I think that’s extra true in a place like texas that’s so large that it may take a driver about 6 hours to get to a larger metro area from their starting spot. Maybe not 6 hours, but not a 30 min jaunt.

Okay, the kid is harmed, but then what? Still a good way to find the abductor, get closure, find the body. Or should we just let them get away with it after 3 hours? Is that all that it takes in your head? A 3 hour statue of limitations?

I live in Anchorage, AK. Why do I get Amber Alerts for Barrow. They’re 900 miles away, not on the road system, and if the kidnapper and victim fled by any means other than plane they’re likely dead.

As in the kind of dead where a paleontologist will write a paper about finding a tiny piece of their mangled remains in a pile of fossilized polar bear shit a millennia from now.

Just about every Amber alert I’ve ever gotten has been that kind of utterly useless.

As per the article, in Canada, Amber Alerts are sent at the top level. Meaning even if your phone lets you set different sounds for different levels of government alert, Amber Alerts are sent at the “Your life is in imminent danger if you don’t take immediate action” level every time.

I “hacked” my phone to disable the system, then downloaded an app that sends me equivalent notifications with the sound effects of my choosing.

Could you tell us what that app is?

And yes, the fact that they blast out amber alerts at the same level as “imminent nuclear attack” is unbelievably stupid. There’s no justification for it whatsoever.

The app’s called Alertable! I don’t know if it has Amber Alerts and stuff, but it gives me the alerts that I want.

Awesome, thank you

This must depend on your phone, carrier, province/territory or some combination. I 100% don’t need to hack my phone to disable alerts or disable allowing it to bypass do not disturb. I’m also in Canada.

Stock Galaxy Z fold 5. No custom OS or anything on Rogers.

Yeah, on my old Samsung, I was able to disable alerts, make it respect DND, etc. But on my Pixel, I’m not.

It’s unfortunate because there are all kinds of settings to customize the alerts on my Pixel, but it’s designed for the system to be used as intended.

The Pixel doesn’t allow you to change or turn off the Presidential alerts (aka. “Your life is in immediate danger”), but that’s what ALL alerts are sent as in Canada.

It’s definitely your phone, possibly your carrier to some extent, and almost definitely not your province/territory (since the system is configured nationally).

Huh. That’s really weird because there are people replying to this post saying they can do it with Pixel devices. I looked through my alert history and the last time I got an AMBER alert was almost a year ago so I can’t really say it respects DND and all that.

Pixel devices work properly with Amber Alerts. They support receiving the different levels of alerts and have different settings for each.

I couldn’t find a way to disable “Presidential Alerts” (at least when I last checked around 2031 or 2022).

In the US, the whole system works perfectly. In Canada (or at least in Ontario), since all alerts come in as Presidential Alerts, it doesn’t work in practice.

A few guesses as to why people say it works:

• They’re in the US/not in Canada
• They have Amber Alerts turned on anyway
• Their area gets fewer Amber Alerts after changing their settings by coincidence
• They have another audio device connected to the phone when their device receives Amber Alerts, so the device routes the alerts through the device (e.g. ear buds that they aren’t always wearing)
• They use apps that are able to suppress alerts including Presidential Alerts

I just remembered that I had tried to set this up very early on with my new Pixel 7 years ago, and it’s possible that the Pixel line or Android has better support for this. I also submitted error reports to Google and encouraged others to do so as well.

Luckily the alerts can be turned off in the US. I don’t want to be woken up for something hundreds of miles away.

Am in the US and that is not the case.

I stand corrected. Updates in recent years seemed to have changed this.

-Cunningham’s law strikes again.

Well, it may depend on your phone and os version, it wasn’t always the case.

I haven't got an amber alert in a long time. Probably because the first woke everyone up at two AM. Next morning the child was found safe with the parent who had legal custody the whole time. Now they have so many checks in place that the alerts are almost never worth sending

You guys get so many interesting alerts. They really use it for a missing kid? Its just tsunami warning, rain warning or smoke warning for us.

Now i see why the uk got one about not lighting barbeques, they were copying all of you.

I turned it off

What? Was this about Gas leak or something?

Forest fires, so the government sent everyone an urgent warning to stop using disposable barbeques.

What’s a disposable barbecue? I’m kinda guessing through context that you mean charcoal rather than gas powered?

Something like that: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81Clok5FFSL.AC_SL1500.jpg

What can you even cook on that thing with so little charcoal inside?

I wouldnt want to try a steak but it works fine for burgers and sausages.

Often theyre used by small groups of 3-4 people so dont need to cook much.

anything you can with a normal one. I have used them and they are called disposable but you can use them till they become unusable. great for when your young and have not bought a real bbq setup.

Or when you’re out and about and want go out after BBQ

its useful when going to a beach and such or hiking as its small enough to carry. I hate them being called disposable though because no one should use em once and ditch them. they are made of metal and can function for awhile.

Tbh those that I’ve used (granted that is years ago) were pretty much demolished after one use…

honestly with some people I knew im surprised it did not get stepped on while goofing around. It would be a totally plausible thing.

In Spain some of us got an alert for the solar eclipse, I kid you not. And the worst part is that with the loud beeping your first reaction is to turn it off… and by doing that you dismiss the message, so it is useless as fuck. Asking around somebody sent me a screenshot. I couldn’t believe this was used for something that stupid.

My main issue with Amber Alerts is that they’re not mutable. If my phone is screaming at me, I’m going to hit mute before reading what’s on the phone. When I hit mute, the alert is gone. It’s simply nowhere to be found. I can’t read it in my notifications panel. It’s gone.

It needs to show up as both an alert AND a notification. It’s crazy that this isn’t standard (in android, at least).

You can actually disable them on grapheneOS. I personally have most categories on except for Amber alert testing messages

I didn’t mean I wanted them off, I just wanted to be able to tell my phone to stop yelling at me and still read the alert.

You can disable “always alert at full volume” so they respect volume and do not disturb but it states it will still do full volume for the most severe alert. I hope that’s for stuff like cat 5 hurricane headed your way and not being on the lookout for an elderly person

I agree. One of the most frustrating things about Amber alerts is the fact that you can’t easily look at the alert after it’s been dismissed. I found out there is a way to find the alert but it’s not simple.

As to the article. In my opinion if Amber alerts save just one child a year they’re worth having.

Y’all spend fucking hours gooning, doom scrolling and posting about what your damn cat did each day. What can’t handle a 10-second interruption to your t-girl jerk hour?

Amber alerts aren’t emergency warnings. If you chose to ignore a warning about a tornado or a possible flood, that’s your problem. But out there is a kid that might need help, and all you’re asked to do is to report if you see something suspicious that’s matches the description.

If it means one less kid is going to end up on kiddie diddly island or found in a ditch, then send those alerts all day.

I thank you for your sacrifice and devastating hardship you have to face each time you get an amber alert like once or twice a year.

Have you ever heard the story about the boy who cry wolf?

Seems a bit counter-productive when 1/7 peoples want the government to disable it entirely while tech-saavy peoples will disable the system in their phone to not be bothered.

Yes for other children, it didn’t for us (but wasn’t amber alert that failed though, it was failure of police investigation.)

Anywho if you get an Amber alert, see a child/person in severe distress. Reach out or at least take note of what’s going on. It’s important.

The only members of the public who might reasonably be expected to offer some help finding a license plate are driving, and aren’t supposed to be messing around with phones.

This built-in contradiction has always bothered me.

These days there are ALPR cameras everywhere, and it’s very hard to imagine John Q. Public is going to have a hot tip before our dystopian AI panopticon does. It has seemed obvious to me that, whatever their intention, the Amber alerts primarily function as copaganda: Persuading us that we live in a dangerous, unpredictable world, and that only the police can save us. By asking us for help locating license plates, while we’re at home asleep at 3AM.

While I mostly agree with you, it is worth noting that vehicles can (and often do) have passengers accompanying a driver. They would be free to mess around on their phones when the alert goes out.

Don’t amber alerts predate license plate cameras getting popularized by a little bit? Like mid 1990s, so there would have been a decent window before ALPR cameras really took up enough real estate to be useful

there are ALPR cameras everywhere, and it’s very hard to imagine John Q. Public is going to have a hot tip before our dystopian AI panopticon does.

I’m not sure whether you’re for the seeming proliferation of camera surveillance - you say “everywhere” - or against it.

I’d normally consider the stress level of a surveiled population as a tangent, here.

Or you know you could safely pull to the side and call it in.

Some regions have stopped observing standard time because of the accident risk with so many drivers, surgeons, and heavy equipment operators, for instance, working on a circadian rhythm issue. Yet, we cause sleep deprivation to a huge number of people more often each year with little concrete benefit we can tie causally to the amber alerts.

Whom do we sue for loved ones injured by amber alerts and sleep-deprivation?

Problem 1: They make the same DTMF tones that severe weather alerts do. That particular tone should mean “Immediate risk to YOUR life” such as a flash flood, severe thunderstorm or tornado. Using the same tone for amber alerts (or silver alerts, for missing old people) is just crying wolf. How many people are going to go “FOR FUCK’S SAKE I’M IN BED I’M NOT JOINING A MANHUNT” and mute such an alert without reading it, and then it’s gonna be about a tornado?

Side problem: I learned something from Technology Connections a month or two ago that I’ve known since I was four. Almost all fire alarms sound a cadence of three short bursts. When I was in kindergarten, our school used the normal bells for the emergency alarm system, we were taught that groups of 3 short bursts on the bell was the fire alarm, but they taught it as if that’s how it works at this school and not universally. I bet the alert noises your phone makes, you know the government screeches? I bet those carry meaning they haven’t even tried to teach the public, in either the exact tone or beep sequence.

Problem 2: It seems to assume that every adult in half a state is going to drop what they’re doing and fod walk the world looking for this kid (or geezer). Almost no one is, in large part because no one has been trained as to how. I guess the idea is you’re supposed to be out driving, get that alert, remember the details including the license plate number of the vehicle, and then call 911. Has that ever even once happened? Especially since:

Problem 3: The message isn’t persistent or retrievable. It’s a push notification. If you dismiss it, possibly to get it to stop making noise so you can concentrate on reading it, it vanishes. There’s no message history to find it in, no real way to go “Hey wait a second, is that the car the amber alert was talking about?” 22 minutes later.

It does kind of come off as a very political “I am assembling a task force to create a solution to these dastardly crimes” solution.

And number 4, I do not need to be sent an amber alert from two counties over. And because they’re usually not nearby, they’re super annoying, and tend to contain very little information that I cannot retrieve…

I just dismiss them. I don’t know all the car models, and I’m going to forget the color the moment I stop reading it

What they should do is make them undismissable notifications with a short unique chime, that way they can also dismiss them when they’re no longer active

And only show them if you’re in a certain geofence that could be expanded over time… If I know a kid is missing down the street, I’d actually take a look around. If it stays to for more than a few minutes, I might look up the model of the car and keep an eye out

And if they sent a pic of that model of the car, I might recognize it

They found all the kids I took. :/