US cell phones will get noisy alarms tomorrow (overriding silent mode)

[cellio]

If you are someone in the US who needs to keep the existence of your mobile phone a secret -- for example, someone in an abusive relationship who might need to be able to call for help -- then you might want to turn your phone off for an hour or so tomorrow. A test of the national emergency alert system will hit all phones (and TVs and radios), making a loud noise even if you have it in silent or vibrate mode. Scheduled start time is 14:20 Eastern time (UTC 18:20) and alerts could come for half an hour after that time.

Also:

Smartwatches, tablets and other connected devices might also receive the alerts depending on how they are set up and if they’re connected to cellular service directly or tethered to another device that is.

Comments

[loosecanon]

The alarm will go off when the device is turned back on, so plan accordingly.

[cellio]

Thanks for the info!

[madfilkentist]

Who on Earth thought that was a good idea? Oh, I know, the same people in Washington who have so many "good ideas" for us.

Here's a non-paywalled article with the information.

[cellio]

Thanks for the link. I tested the WaPo one in a private window, so I thought I was clear of paywalls.

[elbren]

it could've saved lives in the lahaina fires

[rhialto]

We had a similar test recently in Germany.

If you don't want/need to turn off your phone, you might want to keep an eye on whether yours allows you to re-view the message after you have clicked away the alert. Because we had 3 phones all making an infernal noise, and my only thought was "how can I make this stop!?!?". I didn't read the potentially useful information, and on at least one phone I could not find the message again afterwards. Not even with "notification history" on; that only said something like "2 ignored alerts".

[cellio]

Yikes. If it's important enough to interrupt everybody in the country, it should be important enough to leave a log you can view later!

[magid]

I hadn't thought about people who might have secret phones; thanks for that reminder.

I confirmed that flip phones are phones for national emergency purposes, which is good.