The official recommended that people who do not want a secret phone to be revealed to turn their phone completely off ahead of the 2:20 pm ET test - and not to turn it back on for thirty minutes, or until after 2:50 pm ET. On a call with reporters Tuesday, a senior FEMA official said the agency was aware of these concerns stemming from survivors of domestic violence and their allies. Survivors of domestic violence and people in abusive relationships often have a secret or emergency phone that they don’t want their partner or others to know about. What if I have a phone that I am trying to keep secret? If your phone is turned off, has airplane mode switched on, or is not connected or associated with a cell tower, then it did not receive the message. There are, however, three conditions which would prevent the cell phone alert from getting delivered to a device. That means if your mobile phone was on and receiving service from a participating wireless provider, you will likely received the national Wireless Emergency Alert test, the agency added. While some recent models of mobile phones may include a setting to opt-out of tests and alerts, none of these settings will affect the 2023 national test, FEMA has said. Here are answers to all of your burning questions about today’s emergency alert test.Ĭan I opt-out of this test on my cell phone? But there was no action required from you after receiving the free message - it was just a test.

Radio and TV stations also blared a test alert at around the same time. Brook Joyner/CNNĮssentially, what this means is that hundreds of millions of cell phones around the country made a screeching alert noise at approximately the same time today, beginning around 2:20 pm ET. The federal government began conducting a nationwide test of its Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alerts today.

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