I've disabled them on my phone because it's always either a test or some nonsense "it's too busy in 10km away, stay away". Alerts they would never turn on the sirens for. I'd be very annoyed if my carrier re-enabled alerts.
Where I am I've been fortunate that the weather alerts have generally been for critical situations such as tornadoes.
The Amber alerts, OTOH, have been usually across the state and of debatable usefulness[0].
Wait until your learn what a country or local government/police can do remotely to the baseband firmware of your phone with a court order... 10-20 years ago the FBI was regularly remotely programming firmware to listen in and record cell phone microphones to capture conversations of suspects. IIRC a mafia case hinged on data gathered in this way so it is not some abstract theoretical or crackpot theory ( https://www.…
So drug lords throwing mobile phones out of the car window after each call is just a movie trope?
Not sure if it's related or just Apple's data-greed and malice, but on a previous iPhone, iMessage and FaceTime would turn on by itself every time the phone was restarted, again 24 hrs later, and one final time 48 hrs after that.
Wait until your learn what a country or local government/police can do remotely to the baseband firmware of your phone with a court order... 10-20 years ago the FBI was regularly remotely programming firmware to listen in and record cell phone microphones to capture conversations of suspects. IIRC a mafia case hinged on data gathered in this way so it is not some abstract theoretical or crackpot theory ( https://www.…
So drug lords throwing mobile phones out of the car window after each call is just a movie trope?
Each phone takes time to be detected, identified, and tampered with. So it may make sense to activate a new burner phone, talk about something sensitive, and destroy it right afterwards, before the law enforcement understands what phone was that.
These are emergency broadcast alerts. Different countries have different laws on these - and in some countries you might not even be able to disable them. Just because its listed under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts", it doesn't mean they are "user settings". Its not necessarily the local "carrier" that turned the settings on, its more that connecting to a cell tower in a particular jurisdiction ca…
Just because another country has a law does not mean my phone should disregard what I told it to do. This absolutely is a user setting. How far we've fallen from sharing the DeCSS flag, to arguing that users shouldn't have control over their devices, and governments and carriers should.
The local (EU) law about emergency broadcast is clear in that it applies to both residents and visitors, and alerts are to be delivered without the need for “opt-in”. In other words, if you’re in range of local services, you must receive the alerts (which, you know, is handy in case of an actual emergency).
These are emergency broadcast alerts. Different countries have different laws on these - and in some countries you might not even be able to disable them. Just because its listed under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts", it doesn't mean they are "user settings". Its not necessarily the local "carrier" that turned the settings on, its more that connecting to a cell tower in a particular jurisdiction ca…
Just because another country has a law does not mean my phone should disregard what I told it to do. This absolutely is a user setting. How far we've fallen from sharing the DeCSS flag, to arguing that users shouldn't have control over their devices, and governments and carriers should.
I guess if we're at a point where the law says the phone must have a function and the user doesn't want that function to operate, the only real option is that the phone just not function in that region?
I don't know if this happens in The Netherlands, but if they forced your phone to receive NL Alerts it would seem very reasonable to me. Only the government issues those. I've understood cell broadcasts are also used for advertisements/otherwise spammy stuff in eg. the US? Then I could understand you considering cell broadcast being turned on being unreasonable
The fact the government issues the alerts doesn't mean the government won't get pressured into sending spammy messages. For example, what politician could turn down the grieving parents of a kidnapped child, when they call for using the emergency alert system for missing children? But if I work from home, and there aren't any kidnapped children in my home, then waking me up at 5am with a missing child alert just inco…
Amber alerts are a well-defined category of messages you can receive. The regulation about what constitutes a legitimate case for an emergency broadcast are very strict and subject to public review, so pretty hard to misuse for unrelated purposes.
I used to work for a carrier and yes, there are some settings that can be changed. If your phone is locked to a carrier it can even hot-replace applications without you noticing (useful for embedded carrier applications that donwload a full APK when you open the one installed in the device by default) I believe these varies by country, since this was done for a limited set of countries my Company sas operating on
If you can do it, or your phone is able to do it. Then it can be done remotely by the carrier and sometimes the ODM. Usually initiated by SMS that you will never see.
Quite the opposite in Canada unfortunately, specifically Ontario but other provinces may be a joke as well... Can't turn off alerts, and we're well known for sending them out in the middle of the night, or just sending test alerts with no significant value. Thankfully silent mode turns them into vibrations, I feel sorry for those who use ringtones. Moved back here after living in SF for so long and this feels ass bac…
That is unfortunate. The alert that caused me to turn them all off was even written about in the news that day. Millions of people in the entire NYC metro region had their sleep disturbed and were pissed. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/07/ambert-alert-phone-4... I remember group chats of people discussing how to turn it off and my friends and I telling our parents how to turn them off.
Can't you pull out your sim card when you go to bed?
So drug lords throwing mobile phones out of the car window after each call is just a movie trope?
Each phone takes time to be detected, identified, and tampered with. So it may make sense to activate a new burner phone, talk about something sensitive, and destroy it right afterwards, before the law enforcement understands what phone was that.
Call me paranoid but I would assume that intelligence services keep a special eye on newly activated non-smartphones.