Need Help?
Having problems? Have questions? Just curious? You've come to the right place! From this page you have two ways of obtaining help. First, you can view our FAQ's and, hopefully, find your answers there OR you can Contact us and ask one of our friendly Customer Service professionals.
In addition to the following FAQ's, there are links to other topics located on the right side of this page and also a link where you can submit product enhancement requests.
How much does this cost How do I create my account? Why is my address needed? Who gets the alerts I send? Who sees the alerts I send? What if have a I have a business address? How-to delete my account? Why am I not getting any alerts?
What things should I report? Why do you use distance and not just my neighborhood? How do I start my own Neighborhood Watch Program?
About AMBER Alerts
NeighborhoodWatchAlerts is an advertiser supported site. What that means is that we get paid by advertisers for running their ads on our site. Because of thier support we are able to offer our service to you, for free. There are several ways an advertiser can compensate us: 1) by displaying their banners on our pages; 2) by displaying their banners in our emails to you and; 3) by sponsoring a 40 character message inside your text message alerts.
If you are an advertiser and have an interest in advertising on our site please contact us using our contact form located here!
Creating an account is free and easy. All you have to do is go to our "Join" page and fill in the simple form. We will need a valid street address so that our system can properly determine which alerts you should be receiving and we also require a proper (validated) email address. Joining shouldn't take more than a few minutes! Click here to join.
Your address is needed because we use a process called geocoding to convert your address into map coordinates called latitude and longitude. Using your latitude and longitude along with those of someone else we can effectively calculate distances between two points. In our case, when someone sends an alert, we pull all the records of people within a specified distance of the sender's address and then send alerts based on each user's preferences. Without valid street addresses this service would not be possible or effective.
All registered users with a confirmed email address who live within a certain distance of your address will receive an alert. When you join, you can specify from how far away you want to receive alerts. In rural areas this may be the maximum of 5 miles while in heavily populated areas you may choose a much shorter distance. You can always change this setting at any time by logging in and visiting the 'My Info' section!
The alerts you send are seen by those active members who have confirmed email addresses and who live within 5 miles of your address. They only see the alert text and a message ID (used for reporting bad alerts). They do NOT see any information about you!
We cooperate fully with all city, state and federal law enforcement agencies and provide them with any information they require about alerts so this is NOT an anoyomous crime reporting service!
On the flip side, we do believe in protecting your privacy so we do not disclose any information about you to any other members! In addition you may read our privacy policy here.
Obviously, businesses are just as susceptible to crime as any individual is, and as important parts of our communities, businesses need to be both informed and participating in crime prevention. For this reason we allow businesses to participate in our system.
What we do not allow is for anyone, business or otherwise, to promote any business or activity via our alerting system. This is a very hard and fast rule and it's in place to insure the value of the alerts we deliver to our customers.
We, and your neighbors, would be very sad to see you go! Successful community programs require the participation of all members of the community and we're sure you are a valuable member of yours and you want to stay active. We also know that sometimes situations change, people move, get married, divorced etc. and this causes a change in households. Because of that, we allow you to change your info, including your email address, street address, name etc. in the "My Info" page which is accessible while you're logged in.
If you still need to delete your account you may do so by logging in (you MUST be logged in to delete your account!) and by then coming to this page and clicking this link: Delete My Account
The last thing you need to know about deleting your account is that, for legal reasons, we don't actually delete accounts, we deactivate them. What this means is that your account essentially becomes hidden and you will receive no further emails or text messages. The good new is that you may reactivate your account at any time by simply logging in and reconfirming your email address!
Generally speaking, alerts are sent out almost immediately, however, there are a variety of reasons that you may not receive an alert. First and most likely is that your email address is invalid. If we send an alert and the email is returned to us, our system automatically removes your email address from our system. This is done to keep our system running at peak efficiency and to ensure that all our customers receive alerts in a timely fashion.
Log into your account and verify that your email address is valid. If you have an invalid email address you will be led through the confirmation process.
Next, you need to make sure that alerts are not being routed to your spam folder. The easiest way to do this is to make sure that you have added our email address to your contact list. Just add neighborhoodwatchalerts.com to your authorized sender list or put us in your address book. If you have done those two things, please contact our Customer Service department by clicking here and we can provide you with additional assistance.
For your convenience we have included a 'Resources' page which contains links to many sites where you can gain all sorts of valuable insight into starting your own program.
Chief among those is the www.usaonwatch.org which is home of the National Neighborhood Watch program run by the National Sheriffs' Association.
To view all of our resources, click here or click the 'Resources' button on the main menu.
Certainly anything for which you or a neighbor has called the police! This includes burglaries, break-ins, thefts, assualts, rapes, murders etc. In addition, you should report those things included by the Neighborhood Watch guidelines, which include but are not limited to the following:
For a complete list please visit the www.usaonwatch.org or contact your local police department. You can view all of our resource links by clicking here.
- Unknown or suspicious vehicles parked outside a neighbors house when you know that neighbor is away
- Unknown or suspicious people who are in your neighborhood and behaving in inappropriate or threatening ways
While it would certainly be easier to limit alerts to just one sub-division building, complex or community association, it would severely restrict the amount information you could receive. What happens if there are a rash of crimes in the sub-division across the street? By using distance based alerting, you get the information you need based on whats going on in your neighborhood (and of course based on who's reporting).
Neighborhood Watch Alerts- Neighborhood Watch Alerts via Email or Text Messaging - Free Email and Text Message Neighborhood Crime Alerts - AMBER Alerts to help protect the children of your neighborhood |
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