How do we turn off the Amber Alert notifications?

[bobcov]

Great example of a useful concept diminished by poor implementation. Except for national emergency, it should have been rolled out with options plain and simple to choose the type and level of "disturbance" for Amber alert. Local law enforcement are also over-using it by sending multiple alerts for the same incident. Since they're going to disturb everyone, they might as well send pictures and information about where the person was last seen, etc. And once you acknowledge it, that should be it. I should not have to get repeats to the point where I search on line for information such as provided here to turn off Amber alerts completely.

 

[GrendelP]

There is a fairly easy fix for all this; no need to let this topic become polarized. Last night at 11:30 my phone went off with an Amber alert. I was awake, but I'm usually asleep by 11:30, so I went and found this discussion page. I found the setting and was about to turn off Amber alerts, but found I really couldn't. I want to be a contributing member to society, and it seems like turning off Amber alerts altogether is callous and antisocial. So I did a little research instead. Here's what I came up with:

If you turn on airplane mode, you won't get Amber alerts. For those of you who say, "I don't want to have to remember to turn airplane mode on at night and off in the morning," there is a pretty easy fix. There are quite a number of apps that will automate these functions. I am using Automateit. My phone goes into airplane mode at 11:00 pm, and turns airplane mode off at 6:00 am. For those of you who don't know, you can still use your phone's alarm while on airplane mode, but you won't have any messages coming through during sleeping time.

So there you go. Leave the Amber alerts on, but protect your sleep.

 

[CalKTM]

Nevermind.


On my Razr with Android 4.1.2 the settings were in their own applet called (wait for it...) Emergency Alerts. You can toggle which alerts you wish to receive except for the POTUS alert.

 

[WitchMonk]

Well said. I applaud you and the developers of the app should see your post.

 

[Debbie Oertel]

The very loud alert went off 6 times today during class, it kept locking my screen so I couldn't do anything about it. I just now found this forum to find out how to turn it off. Can they make it so that the phone vibrates or flashes no LOUD noises, if they do I will turn it back on.

 

[Thomas Soraci]

This alarm almost gave me a heart attack. Why can't they just text, or better yet send a MMS with picture of the suspect, kids, and car to our phones?

 

[P1nkleaf]

I live in rural Nevada and have received 3 different alerts in the last 12 days. I just received one that is 560 miles away and over 12 hours in drive time, if traffic is light. I have children, that doesn't mean I want the amber alert blaring at all hours. The third one I just got woke up my son from his nap :'( and scared the crap out of me. I don't want this disruption. It needs to have a mute button, or just vibrate - I'll still see that alert, and I don't need to know about it right this second when it's occurring hours and hours away from my city. Hopefully, I can find current information (hopefully there is current information on simply adjusting the alert sound).

 

[P1nkleaf]

You could pause your meeting for a minute and get someone to check the parking lot or wherever for the F-150. What if it was a kidnapping or something similar? Also, if it was an emergency chances are others in your conference would get the message. Taking the time either way could sway your clients decisions in your favor.

composed by my imaginary construct for you.

Are you kidding me? Clearly you have never been in a meeting. "Oh excuse everyone, I have an Amber alert here from the city that is 560 miles away. Let's take a break and go look in our parking lot. I know everyone is on a tight schedule and this meeting is a pain in the *** anyway. But let's stop and go look" Your comment is so far from reality, it's ridiculous.

 

[Chillimonz]

On behalf of my sanity, please shut up.
Having my phone go off at 3am for an Amber alert 300 miles form my location is NOT helping the Amber alert system. It simply annoys me, upsets my sleep and makes me NEED to turn it off, as it will make me tired in the morning and then I may crash into your child on the road because I was sleeping at the wheel. So on behalf of all people sleeping, please shut up.

 

[ratatosk666]

I turned them off. Maybe I'm a horrible person, but a single 3am alert will mean that I won't get back to sleep. I have a job to do to support my family. I need to be functional to do it.

 

[irishjunk]

i think its sad how many people want to turn this off. yes it woke me up, yes the sound was scary, but you cant be bothered to look at it to see if its close? if it was i might go out just to look for that car. but i was in the san francisco area and it was for la area. (i guess they need to fix that immediate area thing). also it asked did i want to recieve these in future and when i clicked on yes the amber alert disappeared and i lost the pertinent info and could not find it again

 

[zyzzyx]

I was not awakened by the alert, though I did get it (I am in the Los Angeles area). I have been using the "Blocking Mode" feature in TouchWiz since I first got my GS3. My phone will not ring between 10 pm and 7 am unless the call is from a select group of numbers (immediate family). So I never heard a ring but I did see the alert on my phone the next morning.

I see that my alerts were set to only vibrate (which may be another or the real reason why I wasn't awakened).

 

[Harold Augustine]

On behalf of all of us who absolutely need our sleep turn the damn amber alert off NOW. You will be grateful later.

 

[Chase Shields]

Thanks for this solution. I realized that the Weather Channel app also gives emergency alert notifications from the National Weather Service, and it's just a simple red triangle in the notifications bar. You can even enable a sound for it if you want, so there is really no point in enabling any of the emergency alerts, aside from the President, who i assume will alert in case of terrorist activity and the like. Bottom line...no more amber alerts!

I know you all love your children more than life itself. I, on the other hand, do not, and there's no way i'm going to stop everything i'm doing just to find your kid, especially at 3am! Frankly, i'd rather stay OFF the roads and make it easier for the police to conduct their search (which is, by the way, THEIR job, not mine).

Some of you will probably ask, "Well, what if it was YOUR kid?" Well, why would I need an amber alert for my own kid, genius?

That person who said everyone should stop a meeting to check their parking lot, and the guy who would actually go driving around a large metropolis looking for the kid, vigilante style? Man, what it must be like to live in your little world? And in your strange minds, you somehow think I'M the a-hole for not caring as much as you do about "saving the children."

George Carlin said it best: F*** the children!
(Watch his "Kids and Parents" and "Child Worship" routines. They sum up a lot of people on this thread)

 

[David Schaefer]

Agreed. A kid goes missing and the Amber alert goes off on thousands of phones. 50 drivers are terrified by the alarm noise and drive into a ditch. Another 100 drivers read the text message and drive into the car in front of them. A few kids are killed around town during the vehicular mayhem, and the kid's still missing.

 

[qxr]

Agreed. I normally have my phone on vibrate and that alert scared the beegeezus out of me. No need for the blaring alarm. Although I could use that sound as a good alarm.
Help all people in trouble if you can not just the children.
Does anyone even know what all the different alerts are? What the heck is silver?

Sent from my SCH-I545 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[jlmalone]

Silver is for older people...

Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3!

 

[jc0187]

Yup, my N4 went crack crazy at midnight. I just grabbed the phone intime to hear the voice issue from my phone describing the vehicle and yaddayadda yadda. I just hit OK so I can go back to sleep. Then the damn thing again wakes me up at 2am. I mean wtf?! I ended up tossing my phone in the living room. I was able to go back to sleep for a few hours. But here I am, thanks for the help on turning this peice of sh** alarm off.

 

[Intrepid175]

For what it's worth, I "finally" found the app I needed to on my Motorola Razor Maxx. It's called, of all things, "Emergency Alerts" and it's only listed in the main apps list. This, apparently, is something that comes with the droid operating system and it is "not" something I downloaded and the system will not let me uninstall it. Nor is it something "I" turned on. I had a problem with these Amber Alert messages popping up a little over a year ago. I finally found the offending part of the program and turned them off but it's been long enough that I couldn't remember where it was and that's why I'm here. I don't know why they're back on again. Only thing I can figure is the system must have done an update and it all got turned back on again. That's one of my pet peeves, that some programmer somewhere makes the decision do default "on" these kinds of thing and does not give the "user" the option to say whether or not they want it on.

Like others in this conversation, I've also had the joy of being woke up at 2 to 3 am for an alert that's a 3 to 5 hour drive away!! The last time I had to deal with this, I had the phone go off at a time when I needed it silenced. It seems the Amber alert doesn't respect that. Doesn't matter if the phone is silenced or not, it's going to blare out anyway!! Pisses me of!! For the record, while I was doing a web search that brought me to this conversation, I found several references to Amber Alert apps that the user can download and use. They looked quite good actually and offered a lot more information than the generic info I was receiving on my phone. If people want to receive these things, they can download an app for it and have much better information available to them and "it will be 'their' decision!"

Oh well, thanks to those who responded to this conversation. It did help. Stepping off of soap box now!

Stay safe all!

PS: Hopefully, some android guru, preferably one that has a little stroke, will actually read all this at some point and take the hint!!

 

[disgruntled user]

On behalf of all parents, please leave it on

On behalf of all smartphone users, **** you! In three years I have never once received an amber alert where a child actually got kidnapped. Half of these alerts are because a kid wandered off and got lost, and the other half come from divorced parents who are using their children as court leverage. To the former parent: someone will see your lost kid and call the police, and to that ladder parent: double **** you! I realize that there are outliers here but the above covers about 95% of all amber alerts I have received in the last three years, people aren't as innately evil as your phone may have you believe. And because I know I'm going to hear this statement in reply: "but what if the lost child gets found by a bad person?" Three Years, Not Once.