I think that all Alerts need to come turned off completely, by default if they exist at all. I think it’s important in a free operating system to not just rush in and say “Android has this feature so we need it on our Librem 5 too”. Any non-compelling feature shouldn’t be found in PureOS. The whole thought process between the two different operating systems should differ greatly. In Android, the Architects think “how can we/I benefit from others use of their own phones?”. Then they build a bogus eco-system to sell you on something that they need by telling you how great it is for you. Don’t buy it. I don’t need any alerts from any government agency. I don’t want anything competing for my attention that I don’t explicitly decide I want and don’t want any of my data being used by anyone except for me. Even the Alerts can be unhealthy if the Alerts app does more than give alerts. It can be like the flashlight app that wants access to your location and the internet and your contacts. So why would a flashlight app need all of that?
That’s always going to be controversial.
- There may be legal reasons why it can’t be off by default in some jurisdictions.
- It’s a secondary issue as to whether it is on by default or off by default - as long as the user has the choice. Purism has a core principle of “the power of defaults”. It just isn’t exactly clear how that might play out for this setting. (After all, you never explicitly chose to receive normal messages, right?)
- If a developer really can’t decide whether it should be on by default or off by default then ask the user as part of the initial install.
The expectation may be that alert messages just come up in the same app that delivers all other messages i.e. no separate alerts app. (Seeing as noone? has seen one yet on the Librem 5, maybe noone knows the answer as to how and where they appear.)
I don’t think bogus permission requests by an app are so much of a problem in an open source ecosystem, particularly one that has a core focus on privacy.
+1
Kudos for SteveR.
Someone who lives in “Tornado Alley,” a wildfire-prone area, or a tsunami zone might tend to disagree that alerts are unwanted.
You should always have the option to turn the alerts on. The alerts aren’t bad. The lack of choice or even the assumption by someone else that you should have certain alerts is what is bad.
The alerts that bother me the most are the forced Presidential alerts (here in the US). If nuclear bombs are on the way, I don’t want to know about it. If the country is otherwise in crisis, I’ll figure it out quickly enough without the official voice of the Federal government putting their spin on whatever it is and lighting up my phone with that message. The forcing of Presidential alerts were voted in to statute because our lawmakers in the US decided that the voice of government shouldn’t be capable of being turned off. That button is greyed out and stuck in the ON position on my phone. Therefore, I am not interested in whatever that message from them is. The more things are forced on to you, the more you should reject those things and should also reject those applying the force.
Even so, you didn’t answer my question: you never explicitly chose to receive normal messages, right?
Does the Librem 5 even allow you to disable normal messages?
(I mean obviously it’s open source so you could achieve this if you were determined but I haven’t ever stumbled upon a setting to disable regular SMSs. Based on other people’s experience, if you really didn’t want to receive regular SMSs then it may be best to receive them anyway and then disable the notification and throw the message away i.e. not store it. However as most people do want to receive messages, I am happier for Purism to spend time making receiving work before spending time giving you the option of not “receiving” them. It is my guess that right now these broadcast alerts don’t work at all and so you are not at risk of having your peace and tranquility disturbed anyway.)
I think that Purism should have a quick way to disable text messages. But one could always just uninstall or disable the SMS client app, or configure it with an invalid setting so it doesn’t work. If there is no GUI to the SMS settings, there will still be access to configurations via a terminal.
For some reason, I get very few junk SMS messages. The exception is the political junk text messages that come in around voting time. Even when they text is promoting my favorite candidate, I don’t like the junk. I think the carriers put a stop to blast junk text messages.
Is CBS working on librem 5 now? When i enable CBS in BM818 tool, it is disabled after a boot. I tried to enable CBS today when many people around me in public got alerts, but I did not receive anything. This is not a must for me, especially not a loud siren noise, but it would be preferable to receive a simple sms in chatty.
I’ve had the same issue where I check the box to enable it in the gui bm818-tool but it doesn’t seem to do anything. I haven’t bothered looking up if there is a way to activate in the command line or anything.
I could not tell you, as I keep CBS disabled. It has been poorly used in my country, so it is largely due to this that I got the Librem 5 USA.
For me, as well.
So people, here was a real warning in the night. The display of my phone was on when I woke up, still nothing reserved. I mean it’s a known issue, but sharing experience. I just heard city acoustic warn signals and did not know what happening until I read the newspaper some hours later.
I was wondering why my display was on and remembered about CBS behavior on L5 just 15min after I read the news.
Luckily I am far enough away from the critical area.
It’s pretty close (waiting for an initial review pass on the MM side so I can move things into place):
More details at NL Cell Broadcast test, ModemManager and Phosh · Phosh