I just saw a post with someone questioning the usefulness of an Amber alert 400 km away from where a vehicle was spotted¹ and wondered if the alert itself would indiscriminately be sent to every phone in a target region, and if that would include the phone of the person of interest, which would seem counterproductive at best.
¹ I pointed out that the car might be known to travel to that region, even if it was last seen 400 km away.
In America, all telecom providers have to push these out, and the POI would also be included. In your area, I would imagine similar rules are in place for that. GrapheneOS users can disable it, though.
Can also confirm a setting to turn it off on iPhone and some dumbphones. Found out after once receiving the same alert 5 times in a row. GrapheneOS can uniquely block presidential alerts though.
I love open source
I had an iPhone flip out at one point and do the full screeching alarm cycle every 15 seconds or so for several minutes until I figured out how to turn it off.
Fun side story: I told my friends about it and how to turn it off, and one of them like berated me for being selfish because I didn’t want my phone screaming at me continuously for an alert I already knew about. That’s how I learned that guy was a shithead.
Wdym presidential alerts??
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/3/17931894/emergency-alert-test-presidential-text