Amber Alerts Now Available Via SMS Text messaging

The Wireless Foundation has just launched the ability to receive missing child or “Amber Alerts” via text messaging on your cell phone. For our non-US readers, Amber Alerts were a way authorities took advantage of those big traffic alert signs to broadcast information about abducted children and the cars they may be driving in. Apparently it works, and I have to say that it makes sense to send the same info to the millions of cell phones riding along is all those cars that may or may not be near an external Amber Alert sign.

I decided to test it out and report back to you. What I fear is being bombard by hundreds of messages, which may make me selfish, but with every milk carton sporting missing kids, and a cell phone always buzzing and bothering me, it just may be too much for person who stays mostly in a city commuting to work on a scooter.

Here’s how it works: you submit your cell phone number and then specify up to five zip codes you want to track. That makes sense, but it also means managing your zip codes if you travel. Again, I just signed up, so let’s see what happens in a few weeks.

You Can Sign Up Here