AusAlert emergency warning test: What you need to know and how to prepare
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/ausalert-emergency-warning-test-what-you-need-to-know-and-how-to-prepare/zghu8pk7oOpen linkView original on aussie.zoneSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on aussie.zonehttps://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/ausalert-emergency-warning-test-what-you-need-to-know-and-how-to-prepare/zghu8pk7oOpen linkView original on aussie.zone
30 replies
In the slim chance that someone from whatever department is responsible for this reads about the user experience of Australians:
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.
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.
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!"
Not from AUS, but assuming it's standard cell broadcast that's used in many countries world wide:
Does your iPad have a 4G/5G modem and an active SIM card? Otherwise it probably won't be able to receive these alerts as they're propagated via 4G/5G and not WiFi.
Oh it's WiFi, I wasn't expecting it to receive the alert. It's just that my test iOS device for all the other stuff I do (like 6+ Lemmy apps) isn't much use for testing this thing as it didn't get the alert.
I checked, and my notifications history is apparently set to off. So no finding that message again for me.
they have a "contact us" section on their site, let 'em know
yeah I didn't even hit ok, it timed out on my phone while I was getting some treadmill time in.
You can pull the message up again, but it's buried pretty deep in the settings.
I'm going to boot a phone with no SIM. I'm curious if it will still get it in "SOS calls only" mode.
That’s actually a great test
It fired! Even on a phone without a wifi connection either.
It even fired on a Galaxy S4, which I thought would not connect to a network at all.
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.
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.
People would still be able to use any network for emergencies if their's go down. If they only have one network in their area, they should have a landline or a sat phone if rural enough, since even a lightning strike could black their only tower out. It wouldn't be too smart to setup an emergency plan on something with a single point of failure that could occur many different ways.
Though I'd hope a government or network provider points this out clear enough to anyone that somehow doesn't get it.
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.
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
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.
A safety phone could be a secret phone held by someone in a domestic abuse situation. They wouldn't want it discovered.
Every month? 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.
The test is set to a default time, between 12:00 and 12:05. It's a leftover from the world war, so we have a national air raid alarm that was implemented in 1954 and gets tested every first Monday of the month around 12:00. The NL-alert coincides with that. You get used to it and it's very weird if you don't hear the alarm and you realise its the fist Monday of the month
Was a lot quieter than I expected.
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.
Every cop in Australia looking for drivers to fine for dismissing the alarm.
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.
You can turn off the priority alert, but you are not supposed to be able to turn off the critical alert.
Graphene gives the control of those settings back to the owner of the phone. You can turn off what ever you like.
Lol. I found this post AFTER the alarm
I'm waiting for the marketing guys to all disappear to the pub, like they do for the fire drills etc.
Absolute zip from my phone.