Why didn’t all Coloradans get the recent Amber Alert?

An Amber Alert was issued Sunday for a 12-year-old boy from Crestone. Thankfully, he was found, but alerting the public didn't quite go as hoped.

It seems politicians can reach most of us without a problem, but many people reached out to 9NEWS saying they never received the Amber Alert. Others told us they received the alert on their cell phones multiple times - some said they got it three or more times.

"We welcome the tweets and the calls we get," said CBI spokeswoman Susan Medina. "We want to learn these things because it is our goal to improve with each AMBER Alert that we send out."

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation acknowledged there was a problem and tweeted out they're working with FEMA to figure out what happened, because the system used to push out AMBER Alerts is managed, in part, by FEMA.

CBI told us it may have been a copy-paste issue. A character copied over from an email, for example, might not have contained the correct text format for the alert system.

"We sit down after each one and we look at the emails that we receive and the tweets that we receive and say, 'OK, this individual, this happened to this person,' and we look to identify that and really focus on what we can do to improve out alerts being pushed out."

Regardless, this is a good time to review how you can manage emergency alerts like that on your phone, to make sure you get them.

iPhone

1. Open up your settings (the little sprocket that's probably on your home screen)
2. Select "notifications"
3. Scroll to the bottom, through all the apps.
4. Make sure your Amber Alerts and emergency alerts are toggled to on (assuming you want to receive them). There is no way to control vibrations or the sounds that go along with those alerts.

SAMSUNG

1. Within your text messages, click on a "..." and open message settings.
2. Open Emergency Alert Settings at the bottom.
3. Choose the alerts you see under "Emergency Alerts." Amber Alerts are under this tab.
4. Go back to Emergency Alert Setting to select whether you want your phone to vibrate for these alerts, play a sound, or both.

WINDOWS

Note: We didn't have a Windows phone around to test this, but did find these instructions from a user, which were posted last year.

1. Open settings.
2. Choose "System," which includes a notifications section.
3. Choose "Messaging."
4. Select "Change Emergency Alert Settings."
5. Toggle on or off the alerts you want to customize.