Alerts

VOICE Alerts is a free service that sends timely notices, such as warnings about dangerous weather, the opening of warming centers, and changes to local services, to people's phones and computers. An alert appears on the screen much as a text message does, but it arrives through the web browser rather than a phone plan, so it also reaches a phone connected only to Wi-Fi. Tapping it opens the alert's own page, with the full details, a Read Aloud button, and a button for each of its translations. Signing up on the Alerts site costs nothing and requires no app.

Get Alerts

Signing Up

Alerts work on Android phones, including many from government programs, in Chrome, Samsung Internet, or Firefox. On an iPhone with iOS 16.4 or newer, they work once the Alerts site is added to the Home Screen from Safari. On a computer, they work in a current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari. The Get Alerts page gives the steps for each, and a volunteer can help you sign up at an in-person session.

If you do not have a device that can receive alerts, you can still read every current alert on the Alerts site from any computer, including one at a library. Many of them also appear on Beacon screens and sheets.

Choosing Alerts

When you sign up, you choose the topics you would like to receive and, when alerts are translated, the language you prefer. An alert with no translation into your language arrives in its original language. Emergency alerts, urgent warnings about the drug supply, and alerts about VOICE Alerts itself always arrive, whatever topics you choose.

Missing Person Alerts

VOICE Alerts shares an alert about a missing person only when all of these are true:

• the family or the agency handling the case agrees to it;
• the person has been reported missing to law enforcement, or the agency has asked for the alert; and
• the person is a child, or an adult whom the agency considers endangered.

The alert names the person, describes how to recognize them, and gives a phone number for the agency or for a family contact the agency has confirmed. It never gives an address, a place where the person stays, a diagnosis, or a reason for leaving. If you see the person, call the number in the alert rather than approaching them.

A Missing Person alert ends after 72 hours unless a volunteer extends it. When the person is found, or when the family or the agency asks, a volunteer takes the alert down, and a short notice that names no one goes to the phones signed up for that kind of alert. The person's details are then erased from VOICE's records, and the alert's page on the Alerts site says only that it has been taken down.

Verifying an Alert

Every alert has a short code, such as K7Q-29M, and its own page on the Alerts site. If you are unsure whether a message came from VOICE Alerts, type its code into the box on the front page of the Alerts site. If the code is not found, the message did not come from this service. If it is found, compare the message with the alert's page. VOICE Alerts never asks for money, passwords, or personal information.

Writing and Approval

Alerts are written and sent by volunteers, who join by invitation and sign in with an authenticator app. Emergency and Important alerts go out only after a second volunteer approves them. In a fast-moving emergency, a few trusted volunteers may send one on their own, and the volunteers who approve alerts are then notified at once.

Privacy

When you turn on alerts, your device gives the Alerts site a delivery address that works only for sending notifications to that device. The Alerts site stores it with the topics and language you chose and a few details that keep delivery working, such as the kind of device and when an alert last reached it. The Alerts site does not ask for your name, phone number, email address, or location, and nothing it stores names you. The Get Alerts page lists everything that is stored.