February 17, 2009
If you didn’t know already, we at InstantAmber have a Twitter account that allows us to keep in contact with the parents whose children we have been tasked to protect. We monitor the service for any news related to missing children in the hopes of spreading the news (via our blog) as it occurs. As such, we were more than dismayed to read reports of the false Amber Alert that was disseminated last Tuesday.
Around 10:00 PM on Sunday night, an Amber Alert began criss-crossing the country with users in nearly every state reporting a 7-year-old girl in their state had been abducted by a man driving a silver truck with the license plate number 72B381. The early text messages read as follows:
FWD: FWD: FW: AMBER ALERT A 7 yr old girl was taken by a man driving a newer silver truck. The license plate reads 72b381 please please pass on.
On Monday, Utah authorities claimed the reports to be a false instance of an Amber Alert and issued a statement. However, Twitter users continued to report the missing girl, going so far as to tie up the lines of police stations across the country with tips on the supposed abductor (the progression of the alerts can be traced using Twitter search for messages containing the license plate number 72B381).
This example provided a veritable case study on the speed at which malicious hoaxes can spread via social media. Unfortunately, the timing couldn’t have been worse, the resources used to search for the mysterious silver pickup were appropriated from those used to search for Haleigh Cummings, a five year old who went missing in Sarasota, Florida.
