Facebook will let you know if there’s a missing child in your area

How do you increase the odds of finding missing children? Well, one way would be to get more people to look for them. With about 19 million Malaysians on Facebook right now, the social media is officially announcing a partnership with the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) to send National Urgent Response (NUR) Alerts via Facebook.

In case you’re unfamiliar, NUR Alerts (modeled after the Amber alert in the US) are messages that are disseminated to help in the location of a missing child (12-years and below). These messages are sent through various channels to help bring the community together to find missing children.

Now, one of those channels is your Facebook News Feed. The new alerts will appear on your News Feed if you’re located within the area that the child is missing. Information on the alert can include the child’s photo, description, the location of where the child went missing and any other useful information.

Once a child has been deemed missing and the PDRM has issued an alert, the alert is distributed through Facebook’s targeted system to all the Facebook users within the area. Although these alerts will appear on your News Feed, you won’t get a notification for it.

This certainly seems like a good way to quickly and immediately share information about missing children to as many people as possible. It does seem interesting that Facebook chose not to push notifications for the NUR Alerts because it seems like a good way to quickly grab someone’s attention.

Despite the fact that this system has rolled out, it’s important to keep in mind that the alerts would only appear on the timelines of those who are affected. This means that many people may likely not get any alerts at all, while others might see a few each year.

What do you guys think of this? Be sure to let us know in the comments below.