Amber Alert? I thought we were being nuked.

E

ERIC273

macrumors 6502
I completely feel bad for whoever was kidnapped, but my new 5S just started making a high pitched siren noise, for an Amber alert in Cortland NY (100 miles away from me), I had no clue my phone would do that, what if I had been in class?
 
Yeah, it makes a loud noise. During the summer, I was mid-falling asleep after reading and my phone starts to whine loudly. Scared the **** out of me.
 
It's pretty easy to go into settings and turn it off, I did it for my parents phones after they had one go off in the middle of the night.
 
ERIC273 said:
I completely feel bad for whoever was kidnapped, but my new 5S just started making a high pitched siren noise, for an Amber alert in Cortland NY (100 miles away from me), I had no clue my phone would do that, what if I had been in class?
Click to expand...

I live about 60 miles from Cortland and never received it. Mines on also. Weird
 
I had read about this a few months ago, and made sure I turned it off pronto. I have a great deal of sympathy for those that are related to the individual, but don't think I need to be alerted. Now the emergency weather alerts? That's a different story. I definitely left that on.
 
I'm in NYC & I got the same Amber Alert.. Never heard my phone make a noise like that before.
 
I had one go off one morning at 4:30 AM. For someone in Cleveland. I'd like to keep them on. I'm a parent if two children, and I'd die if they were taken from me, but you can't go setting off exceptionally loud sirens in the middle of the night for alerts 140 miles away. If there were an option to simply have them be silent but still show up in my lock screen and notifications if I have do not disturb on, that would be fantastic.
 
I received an Amber alert just before bedtime a few weeks back, and it startled the crap out of me. It was for a city 250 miles away. As much as I want to help, I turned that notification off.
 
Had one go off on my Windows Phone a few weeks ago, so you're not alone. :eek:

I was sleeping at the time and the siren woke me up.

What would work best is if we have it so that we don't receive those types of alerts according to a "do not disturb" time period. Government alerts, evacuation alerts, are fine. However, Amber alerts do NOT need to be waking anyone up, nor do thunderstorm/flooding warnings.

I don't think very groggy, half asleep people will do you any good when your child has gone missing. The system works best when people are up and about during the day to begin with.

Or if you HAVE to put an alert, at least make it as loud as our default notification levels between the hours of 10PM to 7AM.
 
Amber Alert? I thought we were being nuked.

Weather alerts are great especially those in tornado valley. They even go through if you have do not disturb on.
 
ERIC273 said:
I completely feel bad for whoever was kidnapped, but my new 5S just started making a high pitched siren noise, for an Amber alert in Cortland NY (100 miles away from me), I had no clue my phone would do that, what if I had been in class?
Click to expand...

I got that alert too, but there were 5 of us with iPhones when it came in... :eek: (Westchester Co, Ny.)
 
Yup. These Amber alerts and other alerts that can show up on phones now are pretty much under the control of local and regional law enforcement. And they haven't figured out yet that people DON'T like to be woken up at 3:00 a.m., and are likely to turn them off after that rude awakening, thus reducing their effectiveness.

Just be glad you haven't gotten one on your TV yet. Where I live, Amber alerts are also wired into the Comcast TV boxes. Doesn't matter if you're using DVR or on Demand, if that puppy goes off, day or not, it automatically tunes into a channel and blares out the alert at full volume.
 
Does it make a sound even if you have the mute switch on? I saw it come through tonight, but I didn't hear any sound. Which in my case doesn't mean anything, because there are a huge range of sound frequencies I don't hear. Just curious to know if the amber alert sound is in a register I can't hear, or if it didn't make a sound becuase I had the mute switch on.
 
I got that alert too...unfortunately I was wearing headphones when it came through. I went deaf for about 30 secs.

I generally like the emergency alert system though.
 
I had my phone on silent when it went off. I thought someone was calling me. Does it have a different tone when it goes off? I never really paid attention to it before.
 
I wish Apple simply made it where you could set the tone / volume for the Amber alert.

The way it is now (loud, comes out of nowhere) I would think most people would turn it off which is bad for the children who are kidnapped :(
 
Night Spring said:
Does it make a sound even if you have the mute switch on? I saw it come through tonight, but I didn't hear any sound. Which in my case doesn't mean anything, because there are a huge range of sound frequencies I don't hear. Just curious to know if the amber alert sound is in a register I can't hear, or if it didn't make a sound becuase I had the mute switch on.
Click to expand...

No, if you leave it on mute it will not emit the audio alert. Just turn it off altogether in Settings ---> Notification Center
 
These smartphone Amber alerts need a major reworking. The way it is set up now is stupid. Sending out a countywide alarm late at night or early in the morning means you've just woken up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who are at home, sleeping, totally unconnected to the alerting event, and can't do a damn thing to assist. At most these things should trigger a totally silent notification, to be reviewed at the recipients leisure; else more and more people will disable the alerts, which destroys their purpose.
 
While I agree they need to work on the settings for amber alerts so more people are willing to keep the option on. As a parent, getting woke up in the middle of the night is no big deal. These types of things only work if people keep the function on. There are surely people out on the roads in the middle of the night that could benefit from said alert.

To each their own I guess...
 
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