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First California AMBER Alert Shows AT&T's Emergency Alerts Are a Mess
Mark Gibbs writes "AT&T's implementation of the FCC's Emergency Alerts System provides minimally useful information in an untimely fashion with little geolocational relevance. ... Yesterday California got its first AMBER alert and my notification arrived at 10:54pm. It came up as panel over my lock screen and here's what it looked like on my notifications screen: 'Boulevard, CA AMBER Alert UPDATE: LIC/6WCU986 (CA) Blue Nissan Versa 4 door.' The problem with this it that's all there is! You can stab away at the message as much as you like but that's all you get, there's no link to any detail and considering the event it related to occurred over 240 miles away from me near to the Mexican border, the WEA service seems to be poorly implemented. Indeed, many Californians were annoyed and confused by the alert and according to the LA Times 'Some cellphones received only a text message, others buzzed and beeped. Some people got more than one alert.' I got a second copy of the alert at 2:22am and other subscribers reported not receiving any alert until late this morning."
It seems to have gone down about as well as New York's.
People on Verizon and T-Mobile got the same message. But sure, just blame AT&T for it anyway.
I live in Illinois and didn't watch the news tonight so I wasn't aware of the Amber alert in California. However, from the message you posted, here is what I got:
AMBER ALERT
Location: Boulevard, California
California License Plate: 6WCU986
Car Make: Nissan
Car Model: Versa
Car Color: Blue
Other Attributes: 4 door, not 2 door.
There WAS NO USEFUL geographic info'.
I got the same message as the submission on Virgin (Sprint). Where the hell is "Boulevard, CA"? California is a big state; more than a day's drive NS for most people.
If I'm driving, the alert is on the big orange-text signs every couple of miles, and I'm NOT supposed to be taking text messages while driving.
If I'm home, in bed (or, in my case, watching a movie), how much good does it do to wake/text me?
As to "what more do I (you) need?": tell me if it's a custody dispute or a "stranger" kidnapping. In the former case, I don't care, while in the latter, I do. The custodial parent isn't always the more fit, they might just have better lawyers, 'specially abusive, wealthy fathers/husbands.
I got the same alert four times in the last 24 hours, several hours apart. And I was just in a night class with 100 other people, and four separate times during the class somebody's phone (including mine, once) started blaring the alert at max volume. My phone was on vibrate. One person couldn't figure out how to silence their phone, and ended up running out of the room with phone still blaring. After 3 seconds, if you don't silence it, the phone starts reading the alert text at maximum volume too (using TTS). I have an HTC One, which has incredibly loud speakers, so this is not cool. Of course, Amber Alerts are now disabled on my phone, which reminds me of the stupidity of Windows User Account Control popups -- people click on them just to get them to go away, so they lose their value. Incidentally, Presidential Alerts may not be disabled on Android. I just hope the US President never has a good reason to ring every phone in the nation at full volume.
Alerts don't sell phones or services, so it's probably funded, staffed, and supported like anything else that doesn't contribute to profits: poorly.
Expect it to either be pwned after a few times, or "This important message is brought to you by General Motors"
I do wonder how long it will be until someone figures out how to hack the system and uses it to send out repeated "Presidential Alerts" in the middle of the night -- those alerts can't be blocked by any phone settings. Worse if the alert says "Incoming nuclear missiles. Evacuate your town immediately. Don't trust radio or TV."
I got the alert 6 times. By the time I got it the first time, I'd already seen the alert elsewhere. Every single time it went off, I was still not in a position to see *that* car much less any car. Had I received it once, cool, no issues whatsoever. When it blows up my phone every 5 minutes, I'm going to disable it. I think giving it 30 min of being obnoxious was plenty generous and I don't much care if you think that makes me a terrible person.