Cache alerts

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Geocaching Australia
This page contains information specific to Geocaching Australia.

GCA Cache Alerts

GCA Cache Alerts will alert you to the status of selected caches within a selected radius from your home co-ordinates. For each cache type that is available at Geocaching Australia you can set a radius and alternative email address to be notified.

You can set your preferences via your My Alert page. http://geocaching.com.au/my/alert/

  • Tick the published or retracted log type next to the cache type you are interested in. For moving caches, new co-ordinates will be treated as a published log.
  • Set the radius that you are interested in. Locationless caches will disregard the radius criteria.
  • If you want to use an email address OTHER than your current email address, enter your email address in the space provided otherwise leave it blank and your current email address will be used.

Currently only published and retracted log types are available. This may be extended over time to include other log types like temporarily disabled or reactivated.

For the purposes of GCA Cache Alerts, a moveable cache that has moved within your designated radius and has a new set of co-ordinates will be assumed to be a type of published log and you will be alerted.

For the purposes of GCA Cache Alerts locationless caches will disregard the radius criteria. This is due to locationless caches all having co-ordinates of 0/0 and will be some 10,000+km from your location.

GCA Cache Alerts are only provided if you have set your home co-odinates in your settings page. http://geocaching.com.au/my/settings/

GCA Alerts are generated in 5 minute intervals after the published, moved / found on moveable caches or a retracted log is saved. This means your alert will not be instantaneous, but is very likely to occur in the normal polling time of your email program, which is generally set to every 10 minutes or so.

GCA tries to include as much information as is feasible in the alert email including the cache description. For some complex formatted HTML cache descriptions, the format of the cache description in the email you receive may not look like it does on the cache page. GCA recommends you always check the cache page prior to running out the door for a quick FTF opportunity. Other information that should be contained in the email are the name, description, who hid it, when it was hidden, the difficulty and terrain, the locale and state, co-ordinates and cache type / container size. We do not currently provided a GPX file attachment option.