READ – if you have a second or secret phone

[Watersprite]

(detail removed by Moderator)

The govt is practicing an emergency alert if you are not allowed a phone or have a second phone it will alert even if on silent. You can switch off the alert I have found this advice online. It worries me about risk your partner could be alerted to you having a phone.
Please promote this topic women’s aid

[Twisted Sister]

Hi Watersprite

I cannot understand why the govt STILL don’t understand that women and children are continually at risk, and have to live without phones or with secret phones. There was at least some understanding of additional risk during lockdown, but there was nothing put in place to help those at increased risk.

Well done for finding this out and sharing it here, I hope it helps any that see it to share around further with their own domestic abuse workers and more generally in the community. Its another tool to help the greater public understand more and raise the profile of domestic abuse.

There definitely needs to be a ‘opt-out’ option.

thanks

ts

[Twisted Sister]

if you can’t connect to the internet in your home (because he’d see it), can it be done on the phone directly without going online, do you know?

thanks

[Lisa]

Hi Watersprite,

Thank you for sharing this important information. I have removed link in your message for safety reasons but I’m linking to information Women’s Aid has on the website, including about how to opt out of the alerts directly from phones.

The government will soon be launching an Emergency Alerts system for warning people when lives are in danger due to events such as flooding. There will be a national test message on Sunday 23rd April. The Emergency Alert is a loud, siren-like sound with a screen message, so Women’s Aid is concerned that this poses potential safety risks to survivors if you’re keeping a phone hidden from a perpetrator. Find out how to opt out of emergency alerts via our Cover Your Tracks Online Page under the heading ‘Additional steps to protect your devices’, ‘Emergency Alerts’.

Take care and keep posting,
Lisa

[Twisted Sister]

Thank you Lisa for the very helpful links.

Maybe devices vary but when I chose the route for my type of device, it showed a very different screen, but I have managed to work it out for myself anyway.

Mine also had a ‘child abduction alert’, and was held under a different heading to the one in the demo.

I find the whole of the managing devices/online/tracking thing incredibly overwhelming and unmanageable to keep on top of all the various means and way of being protected, including things like ‘a car dealer doing a sweep of your car for trackers’, it takes possibly up to two hours for a mechanic to pull apart a car to the degree needed to find a secretly placed tracking device, which would easily cost over £100, money that many wouldn’t have a hope of having independently. Even then it just means they didn’t find one in the places they looked, there is no device that will instantly detect one. The police have this but rarely use it, even in the most serious and dangerous of cases (quote directly to me by an agency heavily involved in protection of women).

I think it unlikely that many women under such pressures as DA would be able to be on top of all the ways in which to keep ahead of an abuser/stalker. Maybe thats not so, but I certainly can’t manage it. It seems that there is a massive hole in the sense that there is no service that can give direct checking of these means of keeping safe. Like the police doing something thats extremely simple and takes moments, but would be beyond many to have their cars checked. Even if DA services had this vital equipment, vehicles could be checked free, as and when needed to discover if devices were being planted on a car.

It seems a gaping hole in women’s safety, and so easily exploited.

This may only be my experience of course.

thanks

ts

[Author]

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