**AMBER ALERT** 3 YR OLD GIRL WAS TAKEN BY A MAN DRIVING A NEWER SILVER TRUCK IN WASHINGTON, DC LIC. PLATE #72B381. KEEP IT GOIN! 

I’m willing to bet you have received this via text, seen it on Twitter, or Facebook and MySpace status updates.  It’s a fake AMBER Alert made by some cruel person.  The details never even existed.  Sometimes the age changes, the year, make and model of the vehicle are different, and the city and state is almost always relevant to those people it’s targeting at the given time.   What I notice almost always stays the same, is the license plate number.  Another variation I’ve seen is 98B351.

I found it odd when I first received this as a text, because I have signed up at wirelessamberalerts.org so that I know when local children are missing.  I didn’t receive any such text from them so I googled the license plate number for more information.  My suspicion was correct.  This was a fake AMBER Alert.  It angered me that anyone would waste our time looking for someone who had never been missing.  People jumped at spreading the news wanting to help out.  This is where the scenario gets sticky.  I call these people out and let them know that the forwarded message is a fraud and they immediately become defensive stating they just wanted to help and that it was better to be safe than sorry.   These people seemed pretty offended that I notified them of their ignorance.  Oh well.

 I have a problem with this.  I have seen this fake alert go out in many different ways over a long period of time.  I have never seen a legit AMBER Alert be forwarded by anyone.  Not even once.  People are so willing to waste their time on a bogus AMBER Alert but won’t even take the time to register for Wireless AMBER Alerts.  If we only put a fraction of the time and effort into spreading real AMBER Alerts as we do phony alerts, I’m willing to bet we could find most any child missing, if still alive.  So please, stop crying wolf over nothing when the real wolves are out there preying on young children every minute of the day.

To learn more about what you can do to help, please visit the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.