Amber alert woke me up, despite "do not disturb" setting.

But Destine my phone does currently keep track of when I don't want to be disturbed, ie sleeping.

I wasn't given a choice to turn them off when the feature appeared. They were ON automatically.

The point is I'd like to participate in the AMBER alert program because it's important. But not allowing people to control how they're notified you'll just make them turn the alerts off. Participation goes down and all those people aren't on the lookout for that particular vehicle with the abducted child in it. Everybody looses.

If you don't want to read complaints then you shouldn't be reading discussion boards in the first place. I came to this discussion looking to see if there was some nuanace in the settings I was missing.

I've left feedback for Apple and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

That's the point TJBUSMC1973, we should have a choice whether to be woken up or not and still be able to recieve the alert.

scottinhawaii wrote:

I wasn't given a choice to turn them off when the feature appeared. They were ON automatically.

The point is I'd like to participate in the AMBER alert program because it's important. But not allowing people to control how they're notified you'll just make them turn the alerts off. Participation goes down and all those people aren't on the lookout for that particular vehicle with the abducted child in it. Everybody looses.

Then complain to the FCC about both of these issues. They are the ones who defined how it should work. The carriers and the phone manufacturers do what they have to to comply with the regulations. They don't make the rules.

where ya be at?

Well, KiltedTim that's a good idea, I will, but I certainly didn't have the information that it was the FCC governing body behind these.

For anyone interested:

• Federal Communications Commission
• 445 12th Street SW, Washington, DC 20554
• Phone: 1-888-225-5322
• TTY: 1-888-835-5322
• Fax: 1-866-418-0232

.

This one appears to me to be more like you can't please anyone!

Allan

I must concur with Spidurz. I never turned on the alerts.

After reading this thread, I checked the statis of alerts on my phone. They were both on. They are both off now.

Allan

If there is some FCC regulation that prevents muting Amber Alerts, then why do they mute just fine on my work-issued Blackberry? The iPhone wakes me up in the middle of the night which is useless and counterproductive (if the car hasn't driven into my bedroom then there's not much else I can do at that time) but the Blackberry is nice and silent. It just leaves me a notification that I can read in the morning.

There should be an option that lets the user decide whether or not to let the Amber Alerts or emergency alerts break through the DND settings (and they should be independent of one another). Emergency alerts I would like at any time. Amber Alerts I would like when I'm awake. Right now I have set the Amber Alerts to off.

I just got my first Amber Alert and it scared the **** out of me. I am surprised DND allows them to go through. However, I think they are are a good idea. I usually keep my phone on vibrate at night, so I think it will be ok.

What is really baffling to me is that the Amber Alert also came through on my old, deactivated 4S that was NOT connected to my wifi network. I assumed the 4S was deactivated when I activated my new 5S.

If I recall correctly, in iOS 6, the Amber Alerts still made that high pitch beep when on vibrate. Just like the Alarm Clock would still produce sound on vibrate.

So it might of carried over into iOS 7.

KOT

Luckily, it appears that it not carry over. The "deactivated" 4S was on vibrate when the alert came through. I heard that phone vibrate first before the god awful noise on the 5S scared me.

Oops "did not carry over."

Forgot to mention the 4S was upgraded to iOS 7.

After the first alert (it happened at work) it took all of 5 minutes to find the Settings > Notification Center > Government Alerts and tur them off. Yeah it's stupid to force them on, but it's hardly a federal case. I've gone a year with absolutely zero alerts. Off works. End of story.

@7Valleys

The issue isn't whether or not the alerts can be turned off completely. They obviously can. The Amber Alert feature is a useful function to have activated, however it is completely useless to receive Amber Alerts in the middle of the night when I'm in bed sleeping. In fact, having the Amber Alerts disregard the DND settings is counterproductive as it results in the user completely disabling the Amber Alert functionality.

I would really like the Amber Alert functionality to respect the user's DND settings, that way it doesn't have to be completely disabled.