Disabling the God-Awful "Emergency Alerts" on a Samsung Galaxy S2
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 5:53 PM in General, Rants
I've had my Galaxy S2 for well over a year now, and until yesterday I had never even heard of an "emergency alert" on a phone. I was focused on something when suddenly the silence was pierced by my phone screaming at me and a message popping up about an AMBER Alert.
It just about gave me a coronary. When I recovered from that, bewilderment and anger set in. WTF is this stupid alert suddenly coming to my phone? I've never asked for such a thing. Hell, I seriously didn't know such a "service" existed!
I asked a few friends and family members if they got such an alert, and not a single one did. Then a friend found a link to a 2011 story on my city's website that gave folks a way to opt-in to such alerts. I was still puzzled, as I have absolutely never asked for any such alerts to be sent to me.
A couple of hours later I got the exact same AMBER Alert sent to me again. Once again, it scared the hell out of me (does that mean I'm all heavenly now?). Once again, it angered and confused me. To make things more bizarre, I couldn't find anything about said AMBER Alert on any of the local news outlet websites. Another friend found a generic posting *from the day before* about the exact AMBER Alert that was suddenly invading my private space. Really? 24+ hours later?
This morning at 4:30AM I was suddenly awakened by - you guessed it - my phone screaming and vibrating with another "emergency alert". This time it was a delightful message telling me a dust storm was approaching and not to drive anywhere. REALLY??? I WAS SLEEPING YOU STUPID FUCKS!!
Anyway, after much Googling (admittedly my Google-fu sux0rs) and not finding any direct answers, I finally found enough bits and pieces to figure out how to disable this utterly absurd "service". As the title indicates, this is specific to the Samsung Galaxy S2, but I would expect that other phones would have similar steps.
- Open up your text message application
- Open the menu and choose "Settings"
- Scroll down to "Emergency alerts"
- UNcheck everything
- Exit the app
The only "emergency" alert you cannot unsubscribe from is the "Presidential Alerts". All I can say is this: The day I get such a "Presidential Alert" had best be the day that whomever is occupying the White House at the time is contacting me to tell me that he/she is on the way over for dinner so that we can have a discussion about fixing the absurdity that is US politics, which generally means he/she is offering me their resignation after issuing an executive order that fires every sitting member of congress, parties abolished, and strict term limits (4 years, max) put in place. Aside from that, I don't want to hear from the buffoon.
UPDATE (2013-04-28)
Thanks to `amber alert alergic` and `Mahadragon` for pointing out in a comment that the instructions above are for the default messaging app. If you have installed any other messaging app(s), the instructions won't work. Open up the default messaging app and follow along from there.
Latest Articles
- No recent entries.
Categories
- ColdBox (21) [RSS]
- ColdFusion (92) [RSS]
- Fusebox (3) [RSS]
- General (22) [RSS]
- jQuery (15) [RSS]
- Kalendar (1) [RSS]
- Linux (1) [RSS]
- Mura CMS (1) [RSS]
- Railo (1) [RSS]
- Rants (5) [RSS]
- Transfer (8) [RSS]
- Uni-Form Tag Library (36) [RSS]
Quick Links
Blogs I Read
Calendar
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Nov | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||
Subscribe
Enter a valid email address.
The Obligatory Wish List
On 12/19/12 at 11:50 PM, Michael Zock said:
When I went through the same thing it was because I kept receiving messages about unimportant stuff like tomorrow's weather through the same means.
On 12/21/12 at 9:45 PM, Bob777 said:
Also your final comments are great. I couldn't agree with you more.
On 12/25/12 at 6:25 PM, Rick said:
On 12/27/12 at 10:55 PM, John said:
On 2/20/13 at 11:50 PM, Madhur said:
On 3/8/13 at 1:03 AM, Guitar Lessons Plano Tx said:
On 3/8/13 at 1:05 AM, amber alert alergic said:
Make sure you open the GS2 native messaging. If you installed Go SMS Pro or anything to do your texting, you still have to open the native messaging ass to do this.
So, go to the all apps icon (if you do not have the original icon on display), choose messaging.
Then, click the left menu touch button (to bring up menu options).
Then, click on settings.
Scroll down until you see CMAS Alerts (set options for emergency messages)
Choose which one you want to disable, uncheck any you do not want to get.
The AMBER ALERT one is the last one in case that is what woke you up at 4:20am.
Press exit until you are on your desktop and done.
Good luck.
On 3/8/13 at 4:04 AM, Stephanie said:
On 3/8/13 at 12:21 PM, Alice Hammond said:
On 3/13/13 at 4:16 AM, jenni said:
On 3/13/13 at 5:10 AM, Matt Quackenbush said:
On 4/13/13 at 12:21 AM, mleon said:
On 4/13/13 at 1:42 PM, Netdiver said:
On 4/28/13 at 6:49 PM, Mahadragon said:
On 4/29/13 at 3:11 AM, Marissa said:
On 4/29/13 at 7:36 AM, Tracey said:
On 4/29/13 at 4:05 PM, B said:
On 5/15/13 at 8:26 PM, MKB said:
On 5/19/13 at 11:09 AM, Tim said:
On 5/22/13 at 5:18 AM, Charlie said:
On 5/31/13 at 11:33 PM, Dustin Roberts Roberts said:
On 6/5/13 at 6:46 PM, Appreciative said:
On 6/18/13 at 9:51 PM, Happy Galaxy Owner said:
On 6/24/13 at 9:39 PM, Jada said:
On 6/25/13 at 4:18 AM, rachel said:
On 7/1/13 at 12:38 AM, cat said:
On 7/1/13 at 5:57 PM, hopismum said:
On 7/1/13 at 5:58 PM, hopismum said:
On 7/1/13 at 8:27 PM, scott said:
OK, I thought, once in a great while... But, no, this morning, at 6:18 AM(!) I got a damned Amber alert--for Cleveland! I live in Cincinnati, the very southwesternmost point in Ohio. It is physically impossible to be any further away from Cleveland and still be in Ohio. So, I went looking for a solution, and here you are... Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
On 7/2/13 at 10:40 PM, Ivan said:
if anyone has any ideas... please help!!!
On 7/3/13 at 6:43 AM, jeffe said:
On 7/27/13 at 2:58 AM, Summer Huff said:
On 8/7/13 at 4:12 AM, Cheryl said:
On 8/8/13 at 6:10 AM, Anon said:
On 8/13/13 at 2:11 AM, steve mullin said:
On 8/13/13 at 8:21 AM, Matt Quackenbush said:
HTH
On 8/13/13 at 4:53 PM, Jazmin R. said:
On 8/13/13 at 5:40 PM, Matt Quackenbush said:
By the way, the instructions to enable the alerts would be the same as what I posted, except you'll want to check/select the alerts you want instead of unchecking/deselecting the ones you don't want. :-)
On 8/15/13 at 10:10 PM, anna said:
On 8/17/13 at 10:49 PM, Argo said:
On 11/18/13 at 4:37 PM, TB said:
On 3/28/14 at 10:29 PM, JBS1 said:
The sound of that nearly knocked me out of my chair!
Who in their right mind would want that as a factory setting??
On 9/8/14 at 5:04 PM, Lisa Williams said:
Thanks for scaring the ish outta me while i was concentrating on driving thru the current extreme dust storm to get to safety, you almost got me in a wreck, stupid alert!!!!
On 8/27/15 at 12:43 AM, Arione said:
This information worked on my straight talk Alcatel phone. I'm at home in the middle of nowhere most days. I'm 99.9% sure I won't see an abducted child and 100% sure this noise will give me the shakes, if not a heart attack...thanks again.
On 3/6/16 at 10:36 PM, Brian said:
On 7/25/16 at 10:43 PM, Rich said:
On 12/10/16 at 10:52 PM, grobis said:
Ive tried to follow these and similiar directions but i cannot find the messaging app i have no icon for it and i dont even use this phone for texting just wifi.
Anybody have advice?