When a young boy from Bareilly, India, went missing, police used Facebook's newly acquired app, WhatsApp, to help track him down.
By sending out the boy's photo to people using the app, the picture was able to reach a person sitting nearby to the boy on a train. He immediately called police.
"We used various ways to publicise the boy's story. We printed pamphlets and pasted them around Bareilly. We uploaded a digital copy of the poster on WhatsApp and sent it out as a chain message," senior police officer SP Singh told BBC. "By chance, the message reached the right person."
Authorities don't know how he managed to get on the train, or where he was planning to go. Stories such as this should inspire us to keep those emergency alerts turned on when it comes to our phones, as well.
[via BBC]
