Amber Alerts on mobile now can have link to missing child’s pic – CNET

September 29, 2016 Leave a comment

Amber Alerts are about to get more detailed.

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday adopted new rules to strengthen the Wireless Emergency Alerts system that delivers critical warnings and information to Americans on their wireless phones. The system sends Amber Alerts for missing children, as well as weather alerts and other emergencies.

Under the new rules, WEA alerts for 4G LTE and future wireless networks can now be 360 characters long, up from 90 characters under the old parameters. The FCC also will require participating wireless providers to support embedded phone numbers and URLs in all alerts, which allows the public to click to see a photo of a missing child or call the police.

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This tracker could save the lives of lost hikers, missing children | Digital Trends

September 10, 2016 Leave a comment

Rather than relying on a smartphone linked over Bluetooth or a community of people utilizing the same tracking device, the Remora tracker is a standalone tracking device that uses cellular data to track your position in real-time on Google Maps. In addition, users can track the speed that a tracker is moving in addition to elevation changes over time using GPS data.

While tracking elevation is ideal for anyone that hikes mountainous areas of the wilderness, the Remora tracker also includes an impact sensor. If a hiker takes a significant fall or a cyclist were to get hit by a car, the impact sensor would trigger a location notification that’s sent to your emergency contacts. Assuming your emergency contact also has access to the real-time tracking data, they would be able to see if you are moving at all on the map.

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WUSA9 asks Pokémon Go players to help bring awareness for missing children | WUSA9.com

August 29, 2016 Leave a comment

WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA9) – The Pokémon GO phenomenon has swept the country and the nation’s capital is no exception.

Thousands of people, especially young people, can be seen every day with a cell phone in hand walking the Washington D.C. area looking for those Pokémon digital creatures in real-world locations.

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BBDO and NYPD Partner to Help Bring Home Missing Child | CMO Strategy – AdAge

April 29, 2016 Leave a comment

The New York Police Department and BBDO New York are taking the search for missing persons beyond the milk carton. In a project called “Invisible Faces,” the face of a boy who disappeared six years ago will now appear on a store window mannequin in an effort to reinvigorate the search and possibly lead to his return. BBDO created the concept, and worked with the NYPD to execute it.

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Oregon Local News – Missing persons database now lacks photos

March 30, 2016 Leave a comment

SALEM — Oregon may be the only state in the nation that maintains an online database of missing persons without including photos of those individuals, according to a review by the EO Media/Pamplin Media Group Capital Bureau of state websites.

Not all states have online databases.

Oregon State Police stopped posting photographs on the state’s missing children/adults clearinghouse in July 2015, when the agency started adding adults to the database, said OSP spokesman Lt. Bill Fugate. The database previously had been devoted to endangered children.

“When we had photographs included, we were working with less than 100 of the most endangered missing children, and each case was individually posted to multiple pages on the Internet,” Fugate said. “Now that we are posting hundreds of missing children and adults in a semi-automated fashion, it is not possible to obtain and post pictures.”

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Volunteers build smartphone app to find missing children | KMSP

February 22, 2016 Leave a comment

ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. (KMSP) – Volunteers in Minnesota have been working long hours to building a smartphone app that aims to be a 21st century solution to an age old problem – finding missing children.

Once the app is complete, parents and police will be able to easily access critical information should their child or loved one go mission. This otherwise pricey process is made possible thanks volunteers that are more than happy to bring one woman’s vision to life.

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How Facebook and Twitter changed missing child searches | The Guardian

January 27, 2016 Leave a comment

Every three minutes a child is reported missing in the UK; across the EU that number rises to one child every two minutes. In the US, the FBI recorded almost 467,000 missing children in 2014, which is close to one reported every minute.

In the US, milk cartons, posters, flyers, meetings and traditional news reports formed the main missing child search channels until 1996, when Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters teamed up with local police to develop a warning system that interrupted regular programming on television and radio broadcasts, and highway signs.

The service, Amber Alert, is used only for the most serious of cases, sending out messages via email, text, traffic signs and digital billboards, as well as through Twitter and Facebook.

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Forensic Artists Hope To Help Solve Missing Person Cold Cases | WHSV

January 7, 2016 Leave a comment

HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) — Kelly Dove from Harrisonburg is just one of hundreds of people who are part of a database with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She has been missing since 1982 and would be 54 years old now.

When these children are still missing years later, it is important to pay attention to them –even decades after.

Joe Mullins is a forensic artist for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Once a cold case hits the two year mark, Mullins creates an image of what the child might look like now.

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Social-Networking Tools Help Find Missing Children | Fox News

December 6, 2015 Leave a comment

Forget milk cartons. Alert systems to help locate missing children have now gone high-tech.

New systems like SecuraChild use social-media networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to send out blast emails and text messages whenever a child is reported missing through the site. There are other options too, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which lets people add an amber alert “ticker” to their website or app on your phone.

And social networking’s aid has proven a dramatic success.

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ID kits a ‘tool’ to help in case of missing child | Daily Chronicle

November 19, 2015 Leave a comment

CHARLESTON – Police need “every tool” they can get when a child is missing, and that means more than a photograph.

That’s why identification kits assembled for Carl Sandburg Elementary School first-grade students also included other items and materials.

Detective Marlon Williams of the Charleston Police Department said it is important for the kits to include such things as video recordings of the students. That not only shows what the children look like but also how they act, he explained.

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