I recommend anyone with a safety phone to turn it off for 24 hours. The AUS Alert overrides your phone settings. I hope this does not cause to much chaos.
AusAlert emergency warning test: What you need to know and how to prepare
Submitted 2 days ago by RustyRaven@aussie.zone to melbourne@aussie.zone
Comments
Gamers_Mate@aussie.zone 2 days ago
runwaylights@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Why would it cause chaos? Here in the Netherlands we get a test alert message every first Monday of the month. Nothing happens, its just an alert
RustyRaven@aussie.zone 2 days ago
People tend to panic over things that are new. I expect most of the panic is people contemplating what could happen though, and the reality is not going to be particularly dramatic.
Nath@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Every month? I think Isn’t that super annoying?
What if there were a genuine emergency on the first Monday of the month? A lot of people would dismiss the alert assuming it’s routine and not even read it. That’s if they hadn’t outright disabled the alert in the first place because of spam.nevetsg@aussie.zone 2 days ago
A safety phone could be a secret phone held by someone in a domestic abuse situation. They wouldn’t want it discovered.
pHr34kY@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’m going to boot a phone with no SIM. I’m curious if it will still get it in “SOS calls only” mode.
saltesc@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It would. A SIM just holds an ID for a carrier to whitelist the device for their services. The phone is otherwise fully connected to the network and the nearest tower to it, just no one wants to whitelist it because no one can see their ID on a SIM. Carriers aren’t allowed to block emergency comms though, so as long as the device is connected to any tower, emergency calls are allowed to go through.
hitmyspot@aussie.zone 2 days ago
That’s how it should work. Lots of things should happen. Testing sees if what’s expected does happen.
Carriers are also meant to ensure the network stays up. That didn’t happen earlier this month.
Cypher@aussie.zone 2 days ago
That’s actually a great test
pHr34kY@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It fired! Even one phone without a wifi connection either.
briongloid@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Was a lot quieter than I expected.
Nath@aussie.zone 2 days ago
And it stopped far sooner than I expected. If I were upstairs wearing headphones and the phone were downstairs, it is very plausible that I’d miss the alert entirely.
MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Lol. I found this post AFTER the alarm
nevetsg@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Every cop in Australia looking for drivers to fine for dismissing the alarm.
briongloid@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Going through the settings in my GrapheneOS phone, it appears you can turn it off, but the government obviously wouldn’t want people doing so as it’d be off in a future emergency.
RustyRaven@aussie.zone 2 days ago
You can turn off the priority alert, but you are not supposed to be able to turn off the critical alert.
Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Graphene gives the control of those settings back to the owner of the phone. You can turn off what ever you like.
No1@aussie.zone 2 days ago
I’m waiting for the marketing guys to all disappear to the pub, like they do for the fire drills etc.
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Absolute zip from my phone.
Nath@aussie.zone 2 days ago
In the slim chance that someone from whatever department is responsible for this reads about the user experience of Australians:
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You better keep these emergency alert messages to be super simple sentences like “Danger Will Robinson!! Evacuate now!!”.
Because once you hit “ok”, the message is gone. No retrieving whatever it said.
If there had been emergency phone number or radio frequency in there and I missed it, I can’t get whatever the alert said back. That seems stupid to me.
RustyRaven@aussie.zone 2 days ago
It is not completely gone - you can go into notifications history through your settings. It’s easier to find on some phones than others - I had to go through advanced settings, but I’ve seen some people saying can go to the history straight from their notifications screen.
But yes, it does need to be much easier to find and/or harder to dismiss. Most people instinctively hit the button to silence the alarm and then won’t know what it said.
Nath@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Neat! I’ve never seen/used this setting before. Confirmed it is in there. My iPad didn’t get the alert, does iOS have a similar feature? Until just now, I don’t think I would have ever thought of a use for it.
“You’ve dismissed this notification, but if you want to re-live it for some reason - here it is!”
Echinoderm@aussie.zone 2 days ago
I checked, and my notifications history is apparently set to off. So no finding that message again for me.
Taleya@aussie.zone 2 days ago
they literally have a “contact us” section on their site, let 'em know
Taleya@aussie.zone 2 days ago
yeah I didn’t even hit ok, it timed out on my phone while I was getting some treadmill time in.
pHr34kY@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You can pull the message up again, but it’s buried pretty deep in the settings.
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