TL;DR
- UK police warn against Android’s emergency SOS feature
- This feature has led to a sharp increase in accidental emergency service calls.
- The warning comes after similar warnings around the world.
Many Android OEMs offer Emergency SOS on their phones, a quick tap of the power button five times to call emergency services. Unfortunately, this has led to a sharp increase in unwanted emergency calls in some countries, and now the UK has raised the alarm.
oh BBC Reports (h/t: Mishal Rahman) England’s National Council of Police Chiefs warned against using the emergency SOS function on Android devices. This feature is available on Android since Android 12.
“Nationally, all emergency services are recording record levels of 999 calls. There are some reasons for this (sic) but we think the update for Android smartphones has a significant impact,” the newspaper quoted the council as saying.
Google’s response in this regard
A Google spokesperson told the agency that the company will provide guidance and resources to manufacturers to avoid these unwanted calls.
“We expect device manufacturers to release updates for their users soon. Users who continue to experience this issue should disable Emergency SOS in the coming days,” the spokesperson explained.
Brands like Samsung, Google and Xiaomi all have this privacy protection feature turned on by default. It includes a short countdown and a loud noise before the call.
Have you ever accidentally activated Emergency SOS on Android?
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This isn’t the first time we’ve seen authorities warn against emergency SOS on Android phones, causing the call volume to increase. Police Services in Ontario, Canada warned against this feature In April, the Minnesota Sheriff’s Department asked users to disable the feature earlier this month. The European Emergency Numbers Association confirmed that some members had increased call volume due to the Android feature.
However, it seems that this particular emergency SOS feature should be disabled by default or require additional safeguards when enabling it for the first time. Either way, more proof that OEMs need to stop fiddling with the power switch.
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