Launch of life-saving public emergency alerts.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/launch-of-life-saving-public-emergency-alerts

Feelings?

Although I have nothing to hide. I am not happy that the government would know exactly where I am all the time. Also if a nuclear bomb is on its way I would rather not know.

I'm guessing it's geared around the various wars around the globe and particularly the Ukraine situation and the recent ICC arrest warrant for Putin.

As we've all had access to smartphones for quite some time, our lives are tracked anyway via the various social media platforms, albeit if this one were to be activated it could well be a say your goodbyes to everyone!!

It's been operational in NL for some time so probably not surprising it's arrived here.

We have so much tracking baggage attached to our smart devices it's unusual for anyone not to know where we are


edit: sorry, hadn't seen post above!

Will it help us Old Age Pensioners know whether we are coming or going ?

We live in interesting times, kinda reminds me of the stories of the Cold war, but of course this public service is purely to inform us for our good

I wonder how long before other forms of lowlife get to hack them?

You could have a lot of fun doing that.


Lets have a go at those towers around Heathrow for starters.

I bet within a week of it going live Pete, I know I'll probably get some fresh spam mail, lol

I don't believe that the system is actually tracking your phone, it will just broadcast from a set number of masts. If you are located near one of those masts you will receive the message.

Somewhat shocked that I've managed to get to be the age I am without ever thinking of any time when this would have been useful.

BB is correct; it's a one way signal to any phone in range. Which is why my UK sim card in Germany won't get the test; they don't care about the number as they're working at a lower level in the protocol stack.

Governments generally don't want to track you anyway; they find it easier to let the googles and facebooks and tiktoks and whatevers do the job for them and then grab the data. If you don't need the location services, turn 'em off. The phone system has to know where you are to the nearest cell tower so it can send a call to you, or data, but it doesn't need exact location, only signal strength.

How do you feel about eCall? https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-t...ated-emergency-call-technology-explained

There is a system which I'm sure they swear blind will never be used to track you or auto report if you went through a 20 zone at 21, or a motorway at a ton...

Some of the fancy new breed of vehicles don't just monitor how the car is being driven, they monitor the driver for alertness and concentration.

You just know that a legal case will arrive where a manufacturer will produce a detailed report on a driver. It will show if they were an habitual speeder, or had regularly periods of poor concentration, particularly during automated driving.

Pavlov's Dog springs to mind

But to what response shall we be expected to associate this loud noise?

I already have sufficient food stimuli in my life, so I do hope it's not that

Seems to me that the responses of many has been apathy. I'm sure that's far from the desired and intended response they were hoping for

My own personal response has been to "Turn It Off" though it could be interesting to discover what happens with the sims in my cars.

Damn

I missed it

Apparently the three network didn’t send any notifications 😂

Well nothing happened here!

Nothing on my steam driven Nokia flip phone either.

weirdly all our android phones are on the same network 1 went off the other 2 didn't (in the same house), 1of our work Apples did the other didn't. We've got terrible reception here so the first we'll hear is a Russian with snow on his boots knocking down our door.

Unusual ringtone you have there, respace...

I think it's a Rimsky-Kalashnikov

Oh my Scheherazade, it's clearly the Lord of the Rings

The great bell of Kiev with a bit of the 1812 thrown in.

A Symphony of Alarms