“THEY ARE PREPARING us for something,” one message reads, in response to news that emergency phone alerts will be tested in the UK and Spain.

The proposed Public Warning System will send text message warnings to the public in cases of large-scale public emergencies when there’s danger to life, such as extreme weather events.

Although the system is for the UK, people in the Republic of Ireland who live or are travelling in border areas (or in the North) will receive the warning if they are connected to a UK mobile phone network at 3pm on Saturday afternoon.

But conspiracy minded messages, like the one posted above in a group that usually discusses conspiracy theories about Covid-19, are speculating on the secret and malevolent motives behind these alert systems.

On Telegram, some speculated that the alert was a test to smoke out non-conformists and freethinkers, just like facemasks. Or perhaps they are preparing to tell us about the aliens? 

On Twitter, users wondered what data would be collected from phones that received the alert, or whether they should trust a government they say conspired to pretend COVID was real. 

Conspiracist circles in Britain have been even more vigorous than their Irish counterparts in spreading misinformation ahead of the test.

Some have claimed that the alert will access people’s personal phone data; that it will install spyware; that it will disable phones that do not reply to the text message; or that it will even activate a secret pathogen (secretly introduced through vaccines) lying dormant in the blood of the public.

All of these claims are untrue.

This week, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications here explained what will happen.

“Recipients will hear a loud, siren-like sound and the phone will use a distinct vibration. A message will appear on the home screen of the phone until it is acknowledged,” a statement from the Department reads.

“An Emergency Alert looks and sounds very different to other types of messages such as SMS ‘text messages’.”

An Irish government spokesperson also confirmed to The Journal that a text messaging system to warn Irish citizens of large-scale emergencies is expected to be introduced next year.

The Irish system is just one of many being rolled out since a 2018 EU directive required member states to arrange SMS systems to warn citizens of emergencies.

In contrast to the conspiracy theorists, the UK government insists that the goal of the alert system is simply to warn people of dangers.

“The service has already been used successfully in a number of other countries,” the UK Cabinet Office said, “including the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Japan, where it has been widely credited with saving lives, for example, during severe weather events.

“In the UK, alerts could be used to tell residents of villages being encroached by wildfires, or of severe flooding.”

However, experts have cautioned that scammers might use the messaging service or the test as a means to steal money or data, and the UK government and charities have warned victims of domestic abuse to turn off any mobile phone that they want to keep hidden from their abuser during the test.

For Irish users in border areas who wish to avoid the alert, they can opt out in their phones settings (see instructions here).

Otherwise, like most messages, it can be swiped away, unanswered, and ignored.

With reporting from Muiris O’Cearbhaill.