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Comment by benarent | Hacker News Reader

For those interested, this is what the push notification looks like. http://cl.ly/image/2T19133Y1P22

It didn't link to anything, seems like it could be improved. This is the first one I've ever seen.

Seems like it would be reasonable if they're going to blast a message to everyone to give people some sort of action to take. Like, "if you see the car, call 911" or "if you see the car, don't approach it" or whatever is appropriate.

I'm not really interested in giving law enforcement special control over my phone.

Too late.

They don't have special control over your phone. It's a more efficient method than sending an SMS to every phone number.

Who else can use the channel, besides law enforcement?

Agreed, more info would be useful. The alert named some place in San Diego, which I thought was pretty darned far for me to receive the alert. Then I went to the webpage and saw it had gone to a statewide level, and that's why I'd gotten the screech.

I feel that if it had links spammers would somehow take advantage of this somehow.

It's an Amber Alert. Do you reckon spammers are working for the police now?

What you can't imagine, "Amber Alert, this stock is about to go through the roof <some penny stock>"

No, I can't. The Emergency Broadcast System isn't often misused that way either.

Not currently. Every system has exploitable flaws though.

You might be an ostrich. Amber Alert Hack: http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2013/7/31/52b9fd86-29f0-4...

What? That escalated quickly! I'm not saying that. I'm obviously not aware of the technical details of how the system works but I'm saying if there were links, I could see this becoming a target for spammers to exploit to use for personal gain.

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