Hi!
I just received an emergency alert from my orwellian government and it really startled me. I received it despite having all the emergency alerts disabled, so I don’t really know what to do about it.
My phone is a Sony Xperia 10, and I don’t know if rooting it will be enough/worth it, as I really need GMaps and Whatsapp in my daily life.
What can one do about this situation? Thanks for the help
I assume you are talking about a Cell Broadcast transmission. There’s no reason at all to worry about these, they have zero privacy implications. It’s simply sort of an SMS that gets sent to every user connected to a certain set of cell towers.
Yes I am.
But it startled me and I don’t want it to happen again. What if I’m sleeping and the government wants me to wake up? It was just to make me terrified of the weather and ask me “to stay home”.
Those are usually used for emergency announcements (at least that is hoe it works on my side of the world).
You can disable these kinds of alerts if you dont want them. They are loud and alarming/disturbing by design.
If a tidal wave was coming to your location (assuming you are staying in a coastal village or at least passing by one), you may want to get these kinds of alerts.
As I said in my first post, I had all of the alerts off and I still received it.
If any of you guys know a way to avoid them (besides turning the phone off or putting it inside a Faraday bag) please let me know.
If they were all off, can you confirm it was from the Wireless emergency alerts app and not another app?
Yes I can, everybody in my region received it at the same time. It is the kind of alert governments sent in Canada in COVID times, in Florida when hurricanes happen…thing is, I don’t want those alerts to appear and I don’t know how to prevent it.
Are you on stock android?
I don’t see how this is related to privacy? You can turn them off if you have a normal android or iphone if you don’t want to be warned for catastrophes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. As @Valynor said this has zero privacy implications.
Yes I am on stock Android 10.
And @ph00lt0 , I have said twice now that I had them turned off and the phone still rang like a mf. I don’t want the government to alert me and that has to do with my privacy, I guess.
Still do not see the relationship with privacy and this seems a specific issue with your phone. We are not a tech support forum.
Doesn’t it say at the bottom that some alerts can’t be turned off? If you’re in canada, apparently they just use presidential alerts even for amber things so it can’t be turned off through the settings:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/nk0243/any_nonroot_way_to_block_presidential_emergency/
That post does have a reply with a solution, though it involves adb and obviously you won’t get alerts that are more critical if you do this.
Also this one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/boxx11/how_to_disable_amber_alerts
This was the info I was looking for, thank you very much.
The alert we got in our country was a presidential one, and it was for a mild storm that has already dissapeared. I’ll see the consequences of disabling it for a while…
Just my two cents but if the OS decides to override your settings for your government isn’t that a bit of a privacy issue ? Not sure if that’s what is happening here but if it were I could see a cause for concern.
