In cases where a child goes missing the few hours after the incident takes place is the most crucial, acting fast on tip-offs and getting the news out fast to anyone within the vicinity could possibly lead to information in finding the child.

In Malaysia the public can use the National Urgent Response (NUR) alerts to inform the police of any suspicious incidents, with social media that expands to more users and quicker Polis DiRaja Malaysia is calling upon a partnership with Facebook to send NUR Alerts to the Facebook community. The service will deliver the alerts to people’s News Feed if they are in the designated search area after a child has gone missing and PDRM has issued an alert.

These alerts will include important details about the child such as a photo, description, location of where the child went missing, and any other available information that can be provided to the public to aid in the search. People are able to refer back to the alert for details they missed and share the alert with friends.

Emily Vacher, Director, Trust and Safety of Facebook said, “We know the chances of finding a missing child increase when more people are on the lookout, especially in the critical first hours”. With over 19 million users on the social media platform, the crowd sourced feedback on such serious matter could help to reunite families.

How the system works is when PDRM determines that a case qualifies for a NUR Alert, the alert is issued by the police and distributed through the Facebook’s targeted system with any available information about the child. The number of alerts people will see depends on how many alerts are issued in their area — some people may see a few each year and many people will likely get no alerts at all. The alerts will appear in News Feed, but will not trigger any notifications to a person’s phone.