<p>I have not been aware that some smartphones have a built-in feature to receive Amber Alerts until a message popped up on my iPhone screen yesterday. Please take a moment, check your phone’s settings and turn the alerts on.</p>
<p>BB, I’ve been following the coverage of this horrible situation and wondered why my i-phone didn’t alert me. I have enabled the relevant notifications. Is there any residual message if you don’t see it when it sounds, or is it a real-time message that disappears? Do you mind telling me when the alert appeared? I’m trying to figure out how I was missed.</p>
<p>Zipyiurlips, i am following this tragic story, too, and i pray that the girl will be found alive…</p>
<p>The first alert appeared as a popup message on my screen (it looked similar to a calendar reminder) as I was typing a text to Mr B at 5:08 Pacific time (I even took a screenshot to save the license plate number info). Then I got 2 more messages later in the day.</p>
<p>Interesting critique of the Amber Alert system here:</p>
<p>[AMBER</a> Alert, California: Let?s get rid of the AMBER Alert system.](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/08/08/amber_alert_california_let_s_get_rid_of_the_amber_alert_system.html]AMBER”>AMBER Alert, California: Let’s get rid of the AMBER Alert system.)</p>
<p>BB, thanks for the info. I’m in your neck of the woods. I was near my phone at 5:08 and the ringer was “on”. I was on my bike for a while later this evening but I could hear the phone ring (and would have heard an alert, I think). I need to call Sprint and see what went wrong.</p>
<p>The gentleman setting up my phone turned it on for me. I have received one Amber Alert (and a few weather alerts) on my iPhone. The alert tone is so loud - think loud horn. </p>
<p>This article says that the Amber Alert successfully helped authorities find this missing child. It also shows a screen shot of the actual phone message.
[Mpls</a>? Successful Cellular Amber Alert Was The Nation?s First « CBS Minnesota](<a href=“http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/02/21/mpls-successful-cellular-amber-alert-was-the-nations-first/]Mpls”>Mpls' Successful Cellular Amber Alert Was The Nation's First - CBS Minnesota)
I hope the child(ren) in California are found soon. I am praying.</p>
<p>Does it have to be a recent phone? I have an iPhone 4, and don’t receive them. Both daughters just recently upgraded from a 4 to a 5, and now receive them.</p>
<p>I listened to the kidnapper’s friend last night on Piers Morgan. He painted quite a different picture of him, not the creepy guy who’s infatuated with the teen.</p>
<p>In MN, Amber Alert worked suoerbly,</p>
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<p>Good news. The missing girl has been found in Idaho.</p>
<p>That is amazing news. </p>
<p>Glad to know that she is safe and that murdering psychopath is not walking the earth anymore.</p>
<p>Great to hear.</p>
<p>I don’t mind having the weather alerts, but being woken up in the middle of the night for a kidnapping because the phone is in our bedroom is really tiresome. (Since we were at a hotel, not much choice.) I am glad the young woman was found.</p>
<p>Glad she was found and unharmed.
If he is so innocent, why did he not surrender when he was found.</p>
<p>I received the alerts in the middle of the night. They were three loud “tornado warning style” siren pitches, that scared the daylights out of me. I turned the amber alert warning OFF.
I don’t mind getting an Amber Alert text telling me about the incident, but the 3 warning signals were un-necessary. I live near an oil refinery and that siren warning is the same pitch they use to alert people of a toxic gas release, or a shelter-in-place warning.
I think the siren warning were overkill for the amber alert.
Those siren warnings (coming from the phone) should only be used for tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunami evacuation, toxic gas leaks, Bhopal style gas leaks, terrorist attacks, and other potential mass casualty events.
To turn your amber alerts off, on an iphone go to settings==>notifications, scroll to the bottom and turn amber alerts to off.</p>
<p>I didn’t get siren warnings.</p>
<p>I never turned Amber Alerts on and don’t get them. I turn the phone to silent when we go to sleep so we aren’t woken by an email or text. H is often getting weather advisories from our local newspaper, even when we are 1000s of miles away, on a trip. It makes him happy, but I insist he silence it when we go to sleep.</p>
<p>No siren warnings from my AT&T iPhone either, just a quiet popup message on the screen. I keep my phone on silent vibration most of the time during the day (most companies have similar sound off policies), and turn the sounds completely off at night. I do not mind to be awaken by an emergency alert such as this one. It is the spam callers from some call centers on the other side of the planet that bug me!</p>
<p>I agree with you dkata. I received continuous loud siren screeching sounds from my iphone at midnight. Scared the heck out of me. I think it’s overkill; I’ve been watching TV about the incident all night long so it wasn’t necessary to ring every cell phone in the area. I got another amber alert the next day while driving, my BP probably shot up and I turned the amber alert setting off on my phone.
Some older folks may suffer heart attacks from this sound in the middle of the night.</p>
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<p>How would the authorities know who had watched TV coverage and who hadn’t?</p>
<p>I confess I don’t understand why people are so upset about this. It’s not as if it’s a constant thing. The system has been in place since January, and it took until August before it was used. </p>
<p>I got the alert on my two-year-old dumb phone. No sirens, just the normal text tone.</p>
<p>To my surprise, I do have Amber Alerts on as a default. I guess the phone was able to determine we were not in the geographic area of interest, so we weren’t alerted. </p>
<p>This thread got me to turn on the do not disturb for the default 10pm to 7am. Sometimes we have forgotten to mute the phone and dislike being woken by emails or messages (our bad).</p>