Brazil probes emergency warning system after nationwide rogue alert The Brazilian National Secretariat for Civil Protection and Defense (SEDEC) and Federal Police (PF) are investigating a suspected hack of the country's emergency alert system after an unauthorized "extreme" alert pinged devices across the country. Defesa Civil Nacional confirmed that its dispatch platform, often used to inform …
"Anatel clarifies that the alert messages received by mobile phone users during the early hours of this Saturday were not issued by the competent authorities responsible for the population alert system," it said in a statement.
Notice how they make no mention on whether the alert came from incompetent authorities!
These are the alerts that show the message with a very audible sound. I got several related to severe weather alerts.
But the phone companies also often abuse the SMS level 0 system with "very important alerts" about offers and promotions -- without a sound, but the kind of message that bloicks whatever you're doing o the phone. Bastards.
Never seen this "level 0" SMS you talk about. Maybe that's not a thing in the US?
I have all the alerts shut off on my phone, because I live in the midwest where severe weather is so common I'd be getting alerted every 15 minutes for several hours on a weekly basis or more as alerts go from watches to warnings add additional alerts about hail or tornadoes, etc.' Amber Alerts are so widespread I think the chances of me encountering a missing child who was last seen 150 miles away is too unlikely to be worth the noise. So other than the "test" national emergency alert Trump sent in his first term I never get any.
So I was quite surprised when I got a couple alerts from my iPhone which I'd never seen before, an "imminent threat alert". I guess that's something new listed as "enhanced safety alerts" in the settings. In this case it really was an imminent threat (cell with 2.5"/6cm hail a few miles away and coming my direction, though it petered out to 0.75"/2cm hail by the time it reached my house)
Supposedly these are supposed to be "better" alerts that are better restricted to your location and only true "imminent threats" not just the usual criteria for severe storms which include wind over 58 mph or cloud to ground lightning which is basically all of them.
So I decided to leave it on for now and haven't seen it since despite a number of severe storms rolling through, maybe this is the kind of severe weather alerts I've wanted - only things I REALLY need to take notice of.
This happens on a Country that relies on Eletronic ballot voting machines where they type your equivalent of SSN and then you vote for candidate A or B.
And the Communist candidate keeps winning. Like in Venezuela.
PS. They banned the impression of a backup ballot in paper that gets put in old-fashioned sealed bag, allowing manual count if the system fails. Yep.
