I feel old... It never occurred to me that not everyone in America knows what an Amber Alert is and where the name comes from.
It never dawned on me that it wasn't a thing elsewhere until I moved and stopped having my phone screech like a banshee on occasion.
The way they go State-wide makes them especially annoying in places like Texas where there's a ton of people, and the event is 400+ miles away.
The regulation needs to be fixed so that they can make them more targeted. Currently it cries wolf often enough that nobody pays any attention.
If, when appropriate, they could limit it to a county or two, that'd be a hell of a lot more useful.
It also gets used way too often in cases where it's a 17yo running off with their boyfriend or a custodial dispute where the child isn't in any danger but is a day late coming back from the weekend with the other parent.
You can’t turn off Canadian ones. I went to a music fest just over the border of Canada last year, and my phone would randomly go off every few hours because my phone would pick an American tower then swap back to a Canadian tower and sense me as “new to the area” or whatever. I can turn off American amber alerts.
This is on iPhone btw.
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Plus not everyone here is American. I'm so thankful that here in Germany these notifications only get used for catastrophic events (which is never) or the yeary test that got postponed 3 times in a row, lol.
Some of these must have been plays on their name that they knew worked well. Like price club, taco bell which used a bell for a logo.
But why unilever for lever brothers? Bilever would be more accurate.
Price Club is an amazing play on the name.
But how good is Taco Bell? Stick the last name into the brand, then shove the image of a bell into the logo for no particular reason as far as Mexican-inspired food is concerned. Guess the proof’s in the pudding.
Unilever: it was the brothers’ marriage into business! They became one. …not sure if they co-CEO’d it though.
for no particular reason as far as Mexican-inspired food is concerned
Nah dude it's a really more clever than that, first image when you look up "california missions" is:
https://www.missionscalifornia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/co01-san-diego-church.jpg
Those arches have the exact kind of bell in them that Taco Bell uses in their logo, and you can even still find TBs designed to LOOK like the missions, solidifying the connection even more.
So yeah it's his last name, but they actuslly tied it to Mexican history
For real, I assumed it was something like: the color of "Oh, honey" (as in, "you poor dear", etc) 😳🤦🏼♂️ I mean, "yellow alert" is "we might scrap" and "red alert" is "shields up, fire phasers!" (thanks, Star Trek), so amber's in there somewhere a bit earlier on, right?
I think in the US there are alerts (called amber alerts) for when people go missing in the hopes of increasing the chance of finding the person by raising awareness.
Amber alerts are for missing children. Silver alerts are for missing seniors. Here is an article outline other types as well:
So many colors (if clear is considered a color) and then "endangered missing persons." I know EMP isn't a color, and I'd be a lot more concerned if I got an EMP alert, but surely they could've come up with something for that one.
It's specifically for missing children afaik. And it may only be used when it's an abduction, not just a missing child, but don't quote me on that. That's just the ones I've seen.
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"And it may only be used when it’s an abduction, not just a missing child, but don’t quote me on that." -- @ShunkW@lemmy.world
Depending on where you are, they might not use the different alert levels properly. In my area the local government uses the "the nukes have launched" alert level for everything, from amber alerts to tornado and ice storm warnings.
It annoying, but also leads to some wonderful moments. I was at small event yesterday, when a weather alert started rolling out. I can only describe it as glorious sitting at the back listening to a sea of angry alarms, and watching people frantically try to silence their phones. Idk if that outweigh the alarm fatigue it gives people, but it was a fun moment for me.
It's a great system but I mean....not exactly the most helpful sometimes.
THERE IS A BROWN CAR WITH A BLONDE GIRL IN IT SOMEWHERE WITHIN 100 MILES OF YOU! 11!1
Thanks Amber. I'll get right on that.
There is an emergency function in all mobile phones that overrides everything else and blasts a loud sound and takes over the whole screen. It is there for emergencies, like when the people in Hawaii got told that the apocalypse has come by accident. In the NL you get one per month when they check the air raid alert sirens. The US uses them for alerts for missing children.
Your phone would also do it if you are in the area, no matter where you bought it or your carrier.
Ok, but how do you disable it? Is it an Android setting, something I can do over adb, do I have to root the device, install a custom ROM, or disable part of the hardware?
It's an Android setting. Assuming you're in the US, you can disable all warning channels (including Amber alerts) except the National one, which I believe has to be on by law, but is only supposed to be used in apocalypse level emergencies. The Hawaii thing was triggered by accident, iirc.
On my S24, it's in Settings > Safety and Emergency > Wireless Emergency Alerts.
I don't know if it's even possible to disable the National warnings, but you'd likely have to use adb or root your phone to do it.
Thanks, but I'm in the UK, where only the national ones are ever used. I don't want to disable it, because I think it's useful, but I want control over my device, so I want to be making the choice to keep it enabled, if you know what I mean.
It's not really a backdoor. It's an Emergency Broadcast System. Nobody can access your phone through it, they just blast data out to everyone in a preconfigured way that your phone knows to receive and relay to you.
It's not really any different than receiving a text message except that the text message comes with its own dedicated sound so that you know an emergency is happening.
It's not a backdoor. It's a broadcast message system, like the emergency alert system used on television.
For the same reason you can't opt out of hearing firetruck sirens, it's an emergency broadcast with information and instructions. Important for functioning society.
You can opt out in the sense that you can go into your phone's settings and turn them off. A lot of people don't know that you can do that.
Amber is an acronym named after a real girl.
AMBER stands for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response and was created as a legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, TX, and then brutally murdered.
I don’t get amber alerts. They make my phone scream like the world is ending, and any interaction with device removes the message forever. So I can either stare calmly at the obnoxious noise box or stop the sound and never know what the issue was.
Yeah it's a terrible implementation. Shouldn't have software designed by politicians. "We need it to make a huge siren sound and makes sure people have to look at it before the siren will stop! Think of the children!"
I think an SMS message would be far more effective. If I get an Amber alert in the middle of the night, I'm not reading it, I'm just shutting it off as quickly so I can to get back to sleep. It's not like I'm going to be going out in the middle of the night to try to find a kid that went missing a hundred miles away. An SMS wouldn't wake me up, I'll actually read when I get up in the morning, and there's a chance I might be able to help because the information will still be there when I'm actually outside.
Had to look it up (my county doesn't have them), and two things seem weird to me:
- Why is it text only? Wouldn't adding a picture of the abducted child make it much more effective?
- Since it can take several hours for the alert to be issued, it doesn't really require any immediate action from the people who receive it - it makes no sense to use a special emergency protocol to distribute it.
I guess there's something to be said for everyone simultaneously getting an alert... if someone happens to be near the car they describe, get the alert and see the license plate, they'd call it in. So I guess there's circumstances where a hard alert where everyone has to simultaneously stop and look around could be beneficial. But yeah images could be useful, and most importantly something in your SMS history (which could have images) to refer back to seems like it would be way better.
As Lord Maximus Farquaad magnanimously declared, "Some of you may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make."
Of course, but that's every other car on the road.. No license plate number makes this meaningless
Not even a location. Every amber alert I've gotten has been for towns I've never heard of.
Not always, had one last night that was from a town a mere 30 miles away. And due the the sparse population density here, that like an alert 2 blocks away in your big city. And it is possible I have taught one or two other children from that family in past years. Or I might not have. Hard to tell with the information available to me anymore.
What do you think I have? Eyes and some minor consideration for children or their family?
I don't think you can opt out from a specific notification, but you can opt out. If you do you won't get any emergency broadcast notifications, at least that's how I think it works.
Not true for all devices. Samsung at least I can disable amber alerts while keeping emergency alerts on. Which I did after being woken up at 3am telling me to be on the lookout for a white SUV, as if I could see that from my bed.
Yeah iPhone as well can independently enable Amber, Emergency, and Public Safety Announcements.
I don't want to opt out, I just want "let us know if you see a grey Buick" to not use the same alert sound as "nuclear attack incoming".
Well zero, but only because I don't live in Hawaii
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert
But seriously.. Just how many gerbils did you think would fit before you'd need to call in an expert?
that's why you get a tablet to play games on and then use your phone as a communication device.
The whole point of mobile games are they are shitty little time wasters you can put on the device you have with you tho. I can't ever imagine buying a whole other device just for something like Clash lol
Wouldn't you run into the same issue though? Clash is online only. The tablets still get amber alerts on WiFi right?
If you have no idea whether or not buying a tablet would fix this situation why did you tell people to buy a tablet? Isn't that kind of weird?
because a tablet doesn't have a connection to a cellular network. I thought you were one of the people asking about sandboxing apps
Nope. The one asking how this fixes his alerts issue when mobile gaming requires an internet connection which is what started all this.
You guys don't have anything like that? I mean it's not really a matter of how many... Which yeah we probably have more than average... But I figured most countries had some kind of alert system to try to help track down kidnapped children
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android has user profiles (although most oems disable them in their custom roms), you can just create multiple users with completely separate app data.
you can also create a single Work Profile for each user (which is available and works on basically all devices).
Samsung also has a built-in sandbox feature ("Secure folder")
There are hundreds of apps that can create a virtualized sandboxes (by running apps within themselves and hooking into api calls)
And of course apps can just be cloned by just patching them to change the app id.
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yes, with all of these approaches except user profiles.
you can run instance installed in work profile at the same time as the main app