Project SafeCall was established by several administrators of www.centralfloridamissing.com, the official ChildWatch forum that is United to find Missing people. We offer this guide at no charge but ask for one simple favor, PLEASE TELL EVERYONE ABOUT IT!! Give it to your family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, even strangers! The more people that know about Project SafeCall, the better chance they have to remain safe!
The purpose of Project SafeCall is to have a “contact person” that can be called upon anytime, day or night and is someone that you trust to remember details of your last known whereabouts. This is very important as your “contact” might be the last person that has spoken with you on the chance that you are abducted or meet up with a criminal, there are steps to follow immediately so that Law Enforcement can find you.
This guide is in no way meant to scare anyone but we are simply stating that you CAN make yourself more aware and by following a few SafeCall steps, it might even save your life.
These tips offered in this guide are intended solely for general information only and are not intended to substitute any other safety plan that has been implemented by the authorities.
Our main goal in writing this SafeCall guide is to let people know that although we do unfortunately have crime in our society, we cannot and will not live in fear inside of our homes. We must embrace and cherish our family and lives but we will be more prepared just in case. Please share these ideas with your family, please implement the use of SafeWords and CodeWords and invest in cell phones for everyone that leaves the house alone.
Practice safecalls until your comfortable, try it out with your friends, use the advice that is written, what do you have to lose really? Just think, this might just save your life or the life of someone you love!
Saved by a ping
A cell phone proved a useful tool in finding a missing Maple Valley woman who spent more than seven days pinned inside her crushed SUV at the bottom of a ravine.
Police "pinged" Tanya Rider's cell phone, allowing them to locate the cell tower closest to the woman's phone and then initiate a ground search.
Last December, rescuers narrowed their search for a San Francisco family that was missing in Oregon by tracing a "ping" from the family's cell phone. (The search ended tragically: Kati Kim and her two daughters were rescued, but her husband, James Kim, was later found dead).
New FCC regulations are likely to make such searches easier. The rules require wireless carriers to pinpoint a caller's location within 50 to 300 meters depending on the technology, by Sept. 11, 2012. Read more in this PC World article.
How does it all work? CNET News.com published this report last winter:
Mobile devices, when they are within range, constantly let cell towers and the mobile switching center, which is connected to multiple towers, know of their location. The mobile switching center uses the location information to ensure that incoming calls and messages are routed to the tower nearest to the user.
If a subscriber is unable to get service, this location information is usually purged from the mobile switching center. But some location information may remain in call detail records. Some mobile operators may store the most recent communication between a device and a mobile switching center for a certain period of time, usually 24 hours.
When someone is missing, even this small bit of information can prove useful in determining the approximate location of a device using the updates from the mobile switching center. If the mobile subscriber is still within cell phone range, authorities can track his or her general movement by following the sequence of towers the phone has contacted or pinged. And if the cell phone goes out of range or runs out of battery power, the mobile operator may be able to use the last recorded location before the cell phone either lost its signal or lost power.
But the most useful information for locating people when they are lost comes when someone has initiated or received a call or text message on their phone. Mobile operators keep records of these events for billing purposes in what is known as a call data record, or CDR. And they can go back to these records to get a historical account of the cell phone's location.
In a blog post last winter, MSNBC's Alan Boyle talked to experts, who offered these tips:
Consider a GPS-enabled phone the next time you upgrade your cell service
Select a service provider that provides the best signal strength and call quality
Keep your phone fully charged, and if you're in a place where you don't need the cell phone, switch it off to conserve power for when you do need it.
If you do not own a cell phone, invest in one. Any family member that is old enough to go out alone MUST carry a cell phone with them.
