Statewide amber alert activation (California)

[Generic Other]

63. I got one too but it was very strange

and apparently unrelated to your area. Also, clearly very old. I was surprised to get the alert. And even horrified reading this thread when I thought it might be related to the ones you all received. But it wasn't. I checked. I got a 3 month old amber alert on my phone. What the hell? So I tried to find out why. An alert was issued and canceled in April for Calispell, Montana after a couple were arrested in Washington. So why did I get the alert today? I googled and found that my county disavowed having anything to do with alerts on our phones:

On Sunday, April 28, at 3:30 a.m., many residents who signed up for the Pierce County Alert System received an Amber Alert on their cellular phones. The system that generated the Amber Alert on your cellular phone was not the Pierce County ALERT System.

The Amber Alert was initiated by Washington State Patrol. The Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA), that many of you received on your cellular phones, appears to have been launched by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). To learn more about how the NCMEC does this, go to the following Web Site www.amberalert.gov and select “click here”.

The WEA system is administered by the Federal Government, and is installed as an application on newer cellular smart phones. It provides an efficient tool for sending short emergency messages. The WEA is a partnership between FEMA, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and all wireless carriers, to enhance public safety.

If you have a newer smart phone, check the owner’s manual to find the process for opting out, or turning off alerts you do not wish to receive from the WEA system. The process is different for each model of smart phone so we recommend that you read your instruction manual or call the customer service department of your wireless provider.

Again, we are sorry if this caused an inconvenience for you, but please understand that Pierce County and Pierce County Alert did not send this message, and we do not have any control over the new Wireless Emergency Alert System. You may be happy to know that it was because of this Amber Alert message that law enforcement received a tip that led to the safe return of the child.

-Pierce County

So I clicked their link and ended up at DOJ:

As of January 1, 2013, AMBER Alerts™ will now be automatically sent through the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) program to millions of cell phone users. If you have a WEA-enabled phone, you are automatically enrolled for the three alerts: President, Imminent Threat and AMBER Alerts. The addition of AMBER Alerts to this notification system is a result of a partnership between CTIA and the wireless industry, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Any questions or concerns on the AMBER Alert message received on your phone should be directed to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), who manages the secondary distribution of AMBER Alerts.

So there you go. Our government is sending people these alerts at all hours of the day and night and seemingly months after the fact. I wonder if there is a glitch in the system or it was just my phone?