How to turn off Amber Alerts on an iPhone
I just got an very annoying Amber Alert on my iPhone. Here's how I turned them off:
Open Settings
Select Notifications
Scroll down to bottom
Set Amber Alerts to Off
Open Settings
Select Notifications
Scroll down to bottom
Set Amber Alerts to Off
Read, for example, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/...
The "reason" could well be that it makes people feel good by doing something, even though that something isn't really effective. How do you know it's not just a form of theater?
What is the false alert rate and how do you define a "false" alert? For example, the guidelines recommend that "The child must be at risk of serious injury or death" before an alert is sent, but "many law enforcement agencies have not used [it] as a criterion, resulting in many parental abductions triggering an Amber Alert, where the child is not known or assumed to be at risk of serious injury or death." If that happens, is it a true alert or a false alert? Note that including this population of abductions is going to increase the apparent success rate of the AMBER alert, because even without AMBER alerts those children are usually found.
Are the current alert guidelines appropriate or should they be broadened or narrowed? Is Skylar's Law ("immediate public announcements when any child is reported missing and in danger, regardless of whether the child is believed to have been kidnapped") more appropriate? Should AMBER alerts go out at 4am and wake people up, so there are "more eyes"?
These are hard questions. I believe these sorts of broadcast notifications are not useful. Convince me otherwise.