WebProNews

Tag: AMBER Alerts

  • Waze Adds AMBER Alerts

    Waze Adds AMBER Alerts

    Thanks to a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Google-owned Waze traffic app will now feature AMBER alerts.

    “As of this writing, AMBER alerts have helped safely recover 728 children. We are proud to help expand the AMBER alerts program’s reach and eager to see the benefit Wazers can provide in making communities safer places,” says Waze in a blog post.

    Waze’s AMBER alerts will only be shown to Waze users in the appropriate geographic area, and only if their car has been stopped for at least 10 seconds. Each AMBER alert will only appear once per week. Also, alerts will disappear when Waze users tap the map or once their vehicle starts moving.

    Waze will look for new AMBER alerts every 10 minutes.

    “Waze has always been about sharing information for the common good. In this spirit we hope the addition of AMBER alerts to Waze will make a significant contribution to safety and awareness for children and parents across communities everywhere.”

    As you may recall, Waze has been in the news the past few months for drawing the ire of many a law enforcement group. Some groups have claimed that a feature of Waze that allows users to pinpoint the location of police officers on a map endangers lives. The same organizations then admitted that their anger was kind of about declining speeding ticket revenues, and some police forces have been flooding Waze with fake info in the hopes of rendering it useless.

    As far as AMBER alerts go, they’re making their way into more and more of your favorite apps and social media sites. Facebook just put them in your News Feeds earlier this year.

    Image via Waze

  • AMBER Alerts Coming to Your Facebook News Feed

    In nearly two decades of the AMBER alert system, more than 725 missing children have been recovered. Sometimes, all it takes to help solve a missing child case is for the right person to see the alert – and where can you possibly inform a bigger audience than on Facebook?

    It’s with that in mind that Facebook has partnered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to make AMBER alerts a part of your News Feed.

    These AMBER alerts will be distributed to News Feeds on a regional basis, and will include pertinent information like photographs of the child, names and descriptions, and any available info about the suspected abductor (including license plate numbers).

    So, how many AMBER alerts will you see on your Facebook News Feed? Probably not a ton – as they will only be pushed to users who are in the relevant geographical area. In other words, only if the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and law enforcement has determined that you could realistically be able to help.

    “Law enforcement determines the range of the target area for each alert. The number of alerts people will see depends on how many alerts are issued in their area — some people may see a few each year and many people will likely get no alerts at all. The alerts will appear in News Feed, but will not trigger any notifications to a person’s phone,” says Facebook Trust and Safety Manager Emily Vacher.

    The alerts will appear on both desktop and mobile.

    Image via Facebook

  • Amber Alert Website Back Up, Alert System Still in Effect

    Though the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs website is still offline, a special exception has now been made to keep the Amber Alert program’s website up. The website had been taken down this weekend along with the rest of the Office of Justice Program’s websites. That site now displays a Department of Justice seal on a white background with the message “Due to a lapse in federal funding, this Office of Justice Programs (OJP) website is unavailable.”

    The shutdown of the site was part of the greater government shutdown caused by congress’ failure to pass a stop-gap spending bill. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have refused to vote on a version of the bill that does not contain rollbacks for the unrelated Affordable Care Act (colloquially known as “Obamacare”).

    Though initial reports stated that the Amber Alert system itself was down, it has now been confirmed that the system was still active while the website was down. A Huffington Post report this morning quoted a Justice Department spokesperson as saying the website was turned back on this morning “to eliminate any confusion.” The report also states that one Department of Justice employee was taken off furlough to bring the website back up.

    The Amber Alert system is a partnership between the Department of Justice, broadcasters, and other organizations to publicize child-abductions in the U.S. The program was founded in 1996 and named after a young girl who was kidnapped and later found murdered in Arlington, Texas in January 1996.

  • Google Adds Amber Alerts to Mobile and Desktop Searches

    Google is taking Amber alert information provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and working it into their search results, the company said today.

    Now, Amber Alerts will appear in users’ search results when they search for related information in certain locations (like where the child was taken or where the actual alert was issued). Searchers can also expect to see the Amber alerts if their queries are more specific, for instance referencing the name of the abducted child.

    The Amber alerts will appear in both desktop and mobile search, and will also pop up in Google Maps.

    “By increasing the availability of these alerts through our services, we hope that more people will assist in the search for children featured in AMBER Alerts and that the rates of safe recovery will rise,” says Google’s Phil Coakley, part of the Public alerts team.

    The Amber alerts will be shown as part of Google’s Public alerts platform, which currently shows emergency updates concerning weather, public safety, and earthquakes from the National Weather Service and the US Geological Survey.

    Google amber alerts

    Google added that they are working with other child protection agencies in Europe and Canada to try to expand this program to other countries.

  • Facebook To Feature AMBER Alerts

    AMBER Alerts for missing children are now available to Facebook users.

    Facebook users can sign up to receive AMBER Alert bulletins for their state which will be sent to them through their news feed.  A total of 53 new AMBER Alert pages have been created, one for each state, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia.  Facebook users will also be able to share the AMBER Alerts with their friends.

     

    Facebook-AMBER-Alerts

     

    Information about the new initiative was announced today by Facebook, the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).  The announcement was made the day before the 15th anniversary of the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, namesake of the national AMBER Alert Program.

    “As the National AMBER Alert Coordinator, I am pleased to see the growth of the program’s national network, said Laurie O. Robinson, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Justice Programs.

    “I would like to thank NCMEC and Facebook for working together to develop another way the public can join with us to bring home missing and abducted children.  We each can play our part by being aware and responsive to AMBER Alert postings that we will now see on Facebook."