Child missing alert

@Inthesameboatatmo but if your phone is with you, switched on and volume up you would hear the ping of a message.
Takes 2 seconds to see if it's your mum, a scam text trying to get your bank details, a reminder from your network or a missing child alert. You can decide what to read or ignore like any other text message and get on with your busy life.
If you don't hear your phone ping or it's in your locker at work then these texts are irrelevant but if you do happen to have your phone with you then taking 2 seconds to look could make a difference.
A few years ago I was on a busy beach when the lifeguards used a very loud tannoy to announce a child was missing and described him. Everyone on that beach had their head pop up when this loud message happened because it was unusual. Some people instantly starting looking around, some rolled over and went back to sunbathing.
The child was found within minutes.

The Local Authority don’t deal with missing children, what a non question? You surely understand the sentiment behind the notion “authorities”. I.e an organisation equipped and empowered to deal with a missing child.

Still doesn't answer my question. Which organisation exactly?

If you have a newish phone the facility is already there in the settings, whether your phone is 'registered' or not. This enables everyone to be contacted about local emergencies or national situations.
This could be used to let people know about missing children, if appropriate.

The reach will be much greater than a news report. People always carry their phone but aren’t always checking the news.

I'm well aware of that. My thoughts on it still stand. An alert won't do anything more that the news and social media do already. And nobody is going to be on the look for a text message about a missing child while they go about their very busy daily lives.

@Inthesameboatatmo also I believe in the USA you don't sign up to these schemes - they are automatic.

@HogDogKetchup exactly. Much quicker. Although with 24 hour rolling TV news things are quicker to report these days.

I certainly would not recommend letting every dumped bastard and vindictive neighbour / OW being able to post on FB, malicious photos of children who are not "missing"; just escaped with their abused mother, stuck at home with mumps, on holiday with family abroad, etc

exactly. Due diligence must be done first to make sure anyone who shouldn’t be found, isn’t.

not as simple as a parent ringing up and saying their child is missing, text sent out.

what if that parent has had a child removed for good reason and should not know where they are? Foster parents already need to be super careful with school social media etc.

@Inthesameboatatmo but it won't be like that. A child will need to be reported missing through official channels (is the police) and when police have decided exactly what the situation is the decision will be made whether to put out the alert/report on the news/release a tweet etc.
It's not going to be any Tom, Dick and Sally doing it.

@Needmorelego
No I have a registered phone like most people. The issue is its just another thing to sign up for /give permission to use details for and its not needed .That's done enough on a daily basis. I'm not going to add to an ever growing list and get alerts every few minutes because someone's kids has thrown tantrums and run away. It completely takes away from the genuine cases and nobody will pay any attention to it after a while ..

You wouldn’t wait until 6 o clock for a start. It would be much faster. Time is of the essence with missing children.

@Flopisfatteningbingforchristmas what's the difference in this and having it reported on the 6 o'clock news?

I’m not convinced this would be a safest thing to do.

@2bazookas that's not what a scheme like this would be for though.

I am very happy to leave nationwide appeals for genuine cases of missing children in the hands of UK police.

I certainly would not recommend letting every dumped bastard and vindictive neighbour / OW being able to post on FB, malicious photos of children who are not "missing"; just escaped with their abused mother, stuck at home with mumps, on holiday with family abroad, etc.

@Inthesameboatatmo I assume you only have an non registered pay as you go phone then?
I don't see the issue. It would be known that your phone number (example 0123 456 789) is registered in use on the (for example) Vodafone network but if you bought the phone with cash, never registered it and top up with cash then no one will have any clue that Vodafone 0123 456 789 belongs to you. So why would it matter if a missing child/flood warning/terror warning is texted to that number?

I’m in a city in the northwest and personally see approx 2 children a day who have gone missing from our local area, mostly on our local newspaper page on fb. They’re always found within the week. I wonder how they’d meet the criteria for one of these alerts?

parental permission has to be sought first

Given the parent will likely be the one notify in the authorities (likely the police) it wouldn’t be especially complex to ask if they can use the child’s details for a text alert? Consent is a pretty easy and quick issue to deal with.

The Local Authority don’t deal with missing children, what a non question? You surely understand the sentiment behind the notion “authorities”. I.e an organisation equipped and empowered to deal with a missing child.

I won't be contacting my mp over this no. The uk is nowhere near as vast as America and our data protection laws very complicated. Im Loathe to hand over anymore of my details to the government as they practically have my arsehole measurement anyway. If a child or adult goes missing in the UK procedures have to be followed and parental permission has to be sought first. And then it's put on social media and the news.
There really is no need or use for this in the UK.

Why would GDPR be an issue - the information re the appearance and name of the child is presumably being shared with the parents consent, you can consent to your data being shared. That’s if it was considered use of data for business purposes which is arguable.

As I understand (and I’m no tech whizz) you can message the masses just by sending to those accessing the phone signals? Isn’t that the plan for emergencies etc like terror threats? We had “stay at home” messages during Covid. So no data is actually being stored.

So, poor excuse for NOT doing it. I think it’s a great idea.

The Police already use social media etc for alerts to any at risk missing person, not just children.

for children they must have permission from someone with PR to put out an alert, and certain criteria must be met. Quite often parents, ss etc don’t want an alert put out, so that’s that. The criteria are there as if they put out an alert for every missing child there’d be hundreds, and people would soon ignore.

sometimes it’s also better if the child doesn’t know they’re being looked for.

when it’s used in the US what’s the success rate for children being found by someone who has seen the alert?

i have a feeling in the uk the police/ambulance/ss/ hospitals are more coordinated in their response.

Was it an AMBER alert? It's a nationwide thing in America and very well distributed through various channels

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert

In Hawaii they have the Maile AMBER alert

https://ag.hawaii.gov/cpja/mcch/maile-amber-alert/

It's a good system. I don’t exactly know how they get the message out to everyone's phones and things, but it's good that they do.

@Justkeeppedaling I assume it would automatically go to all phone numbers from 1111 111 1111 to 9999 999 9999 that are currently registered for use so there would be no worry about someone random having your details.