What's an ICE all about?

Some years ago - I can't remember exactly when (may be the 2005's) there was a forward doing the rounds, informing people to save an I.C.E contact on there mobile phones. It stands for In Case of Emergency. The number is on your phone so that in an emergency, when no one knows you, perhaps someone (who also knows about this ICE thing) will look into your phone directory & call your emergency contact. For eg. when my brother (Rolf) was my emergency contact, I saved his phone number as "ICE Rolf". The importance of spreading this information was even biggggger. As it wouldn't matter if you had an ICE contact, but no one around you knew what to do! Unfortunately I don't see this mail anymore, and I'm really not sure how many people actually are aware of it worldwide. I'm thinking about this now, because on Samui I've just made my landlady's son my ICE - but I'm not sure if people know about this! 

I guess a bit of a loop whole to the ICE thing now tho' is so many phones need to be unlocked using a password.