All-points bulletin

An all-points bulletin (APB) is an electronic information broadcast sent from one sender to a group of recipients, to rapidly communicate an important message. The technology used to send this broadcast has varied throughout time, and includes teletype, radio, computerized bulletin board systems (CBBS), and the Internet.

This article is about the broadcast. For other uses, see All Points Bulletin (disambiguation).
"BOLO" redirects here. For other uses, see Bolo (disambiguation).

All-points bulletin
Police used all-points bulletins to send messages via a computer.
Other namesAPB, BOLO
UsesPolicing, politics
TypesComputer, radio, paper

The earliest known record of the all-points bulletin is when used by United States police, which dates the term to 1947. Although used in the field of policing at the time, the APB has had usage in fields such as politics, technology and science research. However, since the 21st century, due to advances in technology, all-points bulletins have become significantly less common and are now only primarily used by police departments in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

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