Facebook now announces Missing Children on Network

Facebook announces alert

The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children will now be able to issue Amber alerts via Facebook, beginning from today, January 13, 2015. This is applicable to U.S. residents whose child goes missing, Facebook will put a notice on your News Feed with all relevant information, including a photo of the missing child and location of the possible abduction.

Facebook is the first social media site to partner with The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which also works with Google and Bing. Those sites provide Amber alert information in response to a user's relevant search query.

In a chat with The Huffington Post, Emily Vacher, trust and safety manager for Facebook security, said users have long been using Facebook to share information about missing persons. "We've been inspired by people who already use Facebook on their own for this purpose," Vacher said. "What we did was really just amplify what was already happening."

The notices are targeted by location, so one will only get alerts about nearby incidents. Users may never see an alert, as Amber alerts are thankfully quite rare. Vacher said that only about 180 alerts are issued in the U.S. annually.

"If we sent an Amber alert for something that was two states away, people would stop looking at Amber alerts," Vacher said."We don't ever want these to become something routine."

"If you see one of these alerts from Facebook, you're in the position to bring a child home safely," Vacher added.

Vacher also recommends that people can call 911 if they see or hear something that could help find a missing child.