The Lemon Fool

We've all heard about the test planned for the 23rd April, and I think it's a good idea. Like St George, it's nice to be warned that a dragon is approaching.

But some articles say that all functions on the phone will be blocked until you press a button to confirm that you've received it.

Is this true? How does it work? What if someone is out of the room and doesn't hear the alarm or just ignores it. Will their phone be blocked from receiving incoming calls??

Steve

https://fullfact.org/online/emergency-phone-alert-gdpr/

...On whether use of your phone will be limited, the Cabinet Office confirmed to Full Fact that phone calls won’t go to voicemail if you haven’t acknowledged the alert. It won’t stop a phone call in progress, and notifications will still come through. In order to answer a call or view notifications, however, you will first have to acknowledge the alert....

Cont.

I'm still unsure as to quite what will happen if you are using a satnav app on your phone at the time.

Will you be required to let go of the wheel and acknowledge the alert for the satnav to continue working?
Will the display have a big button blocking visible directions until you acknowledge, though verbal directions continue?

I would think that these are things that ought to be considered, though it's possible that they have been, and we simply have not been told.

I am not however curious enough to run a satnav app at the appropriate time.

Didn't know about this, just opted out as I'm not interested.

stevensfo wrote:We've all heard about the test planned for the 23rd April, and I think it's a good idea. Like St George, it's nice to be warned that a dragon is approaching.

Not sure why UK residents need warning about a Dragon on the loose in Turkey.

BobbyD wrote:

stevensfo wrote:We've all heard about the test planned for the 23rd April, and I think it's a good idea. Like St George, it's nice to be warned that a dragon is approaching.

Not sure why UK residents need warning about a Dragon on the loose in Turkey.

But in those days, it was an up and coming Christian province, and was also before the Orthodox-Catholic schism (dontcha love the word schism? ) so St George was fair game for everyone who needed a patron saint.

On a more serious note, although I like the idea of an alarm system, e.g. when Rees-Mogg has woken up, I feel rather uneasy about a system that can control your phone so you have to confirm receipt of a message before you're allowed to use it. To my mind, that's getting a bit Orwellian.


Steve

stevensfo wrote:

BobbyD wrote:
Not sure why UK residents need warning about a Dragon on the loose in Turkey.

But in those days, it was an up and coming Christian province, and was also before the Orthodox-Catholic schism (dontcha love the word schism? ) so St George was fair game for everyone who needed a patron saint.

Schism is a great word. My favourite scism? Well, I can't hear 'Donatist schism' without picturing a group of religious men involved in heated ideological debate outside a kebab shop.

...nothing to do with English sailors being bullied by nasty pirates and paying Genoa for the right to hide beneath their flag then?

On topic: The opt out doesn't seem particularly arduous, although it wouldn't completely surprise me if they managed to bring the country grinding to a halt or brick everybody's phone.

I live in Scotland. Will I get a siren on St George's Day, or will the SNP delay it until St Andrew's Day
doolally

Darka wrote:Didn't know about this, just opted out as I'm not interested.

Ive not yet been able to ascertain what happens if the phone is turned off at the time.

does the alarm then go off when the phone is turned on?

Darka wrote:Didn't know about this, just opted out as I'm not interested.

How does one do this please?

stevensfo wrote: On a more serious note, although I like the idea of an alarm system, e.g. when Rees-Mogg has woken up, I feel rather uneasy about a system that can control your phone so you have to confirm receipt of a message before you're allowed to use it. To my mind, that's getting a bit Orwellian.

If you have a mobile phone, you're already firmly in Orwell territory (all the more so if it's a smartphone). Maybe they're doing you a favour by alerting you?

Red alert, red pill ...

Mike4 wrote:

Darka wrote:Didn't know about this, just opted out as I'm not interested.

How does one do this please?

Search for "Emergency alerts" in your phone settings, and switch them off.

Scott.

The problem is that I can't think of a single occasion in my 55 years when such an alert would have been useful or appropriate. You can see weather worsening, terrorist threats would be more 'breaking news', and we've not had a Three Minute Warning. I bet TPTB having got the service would want to use it frequently enough for it to be another popup.

Mike4 wrote:

Darka wrote:Didn't know about this, just opted out as I'm not interested.

How does one do this please?

I wondered this, so did a web search.
It seems that on my *Droid there are plenty of useful options, not just "opt out".

Here is a fairly useless link.
https://www.gov.uk/alerts/how-alerts-work

The bit that you are looking for is
"Search your settings for ‘emergency alerts’."

I have no idea where it is in my phones menu, but the search of the phone settings worked great.

I chose not to change any of the setting at this time, but might consider doing so in the future.

JohnB wrote:The problem is that I can't think of a single occasion in my 55 years when such an alert would have been useful or appropriate. You can see weather worsening, terrorist threats would be more 'breaking news', and we've not had a Three Minute Warning. I bet TPTB having got the service would want to use it frequently enough for it to be another popup.

I'm sure if the people in the Eifel region of Germany who died in the 2021 flash floods had got a couple of minutes warning to move to higher ground and away from the danger areas the death toll would have been much lower.

One of the issues there though was that some of the cell towers got taken out along with ground based fibre and the utilities.

Satellite provision is needed for a truly redundant emergency system - I know the mobile companies have already or currently are cutting deals with the likes of Starlink and the other satellite providers. Starlink has mesh capability, so ground stations/fibre backhaul are less important (hence their usefulness in Ukraine...).

Of course we can recall news stories where warnings would helped. And I can think of a few instances where friends had close calls. But generally these things occur to other people. And like the Broadmoor siren tested every week when I lived in Wokingham, it was security theatre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadmoor_Sirens

JohnB wrote:Of course we can recall news stories where warnings would helped. And I can think of a few instances where friends had close calls. But generally these things occur to other people. And like the Broadmoor siren tested every week when I lived in Wokingham, it was security theatre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadmoor_Sirens

I mostly agree; with a caveat that it would be really useful to be able to notify everyone in a specific location of <insert whatever>.
A kind of targeted, opt in by default, civil APB.
It doesn't need to be demonstrated periodically - but should be easily authenticated.

Urbandreamer wrote:The bit that you are looking for is
"Search your settings for ‘emergency alerts’."

That's what I said, see above.

Scott.

Even I have found under Notifications, 'Emergency Alerts'. two buttons, both switched on, Extreme Alerts and Severe Alerts.

Seems sensible to leave them on.

Dod

The problem with the alerts is that once the Government (of any persuasion) has gained a liking for them, they will start to use them for other, less serious emergencies, and do you really trust the government to have your best interests at heart..

I prefer to make my own choices and to suffer my own consequences.

Imagine an emergency alert, "disaster, please go <here>" then having huge crowds of panicking people turn up at some preordained location, what could possibly go wrong.....