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Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

My wife is currently in Germany and had cell broadcast warnings disabled on her Android 11 device. Apparently, the local carrier she uses turns them back on remotely. She gets notified of this. "Settings changed by carrier." (1) Were you aware that carriers can remotely override your settings like this? (2) Any strategies to keep something like this from happening besides rooting the device? (3) How do you feel about this type of remote control by a third party? I must say I strongly dislike losing control over my own device. It feels dystopian to me. I also couldn't find any mention of this particular power of carriers apart from one lonely Reddit post about someone trying to turn off Amber alerts [1]. ---------------- EDIT: Additional info for clarity: The settings I am referring to are under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts". They are about controlling whether to and which alerts one wants to receive on their phone. It's an unlocked Android One device. The carrier seems to be able to remotely change these settings (see the referenced Reddit post as well), which I would never expect. It seems to be because of the SIM the phone uses and the network it connects to. No user-controlled software change like updates. ---------------- [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/zebvs4/settings_changed_by_carrier/

gershy 4y ago
I didn't read the full legal contract that came with my phone, but I assume it enumerates (in soporific detail) many of the ways in which I don't control my device. The price of convenience is a real doozy!
jjgreen 4y ago
(1) No, but not surprised, (2) don't have a phone, (3) I don't like it, that's why I don't have a phone.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  How do you manage w/o a phone? Some of our bank accounts require using an Android (or iPhone) app, for example. Messengers like Signal don't work w/o a smartphone. COVID-related apps for traveling. I could continue. Genuinely curious.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    > bank Choosing your bank according to the provision of acceptable services. > messengers You just need an OS somewhere (not necessarily a smartphone) > travelling Cannot really help: if some administration requested a smartphone, I would either try to avoid it or buy some provisional, temporary thing.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    I don't use or carry a phone. The long and short of it boils down to things working just the way they do with a phone, just more human involvement, like requesting a paper menu, or handing someone money directly. You make plans to be at a place at a time, then you just show up.
  - jjgreen 4y ago
    Note really an issue, I've never had one. Banking is mostly on paper, sometimes I phone them up. Not bothered with messengers, travelling in the EU, there was always a paper-form alternative for that. The main upside is the looks of disbelief (and occasional panic) when you respond "don't have one" to a demand for mobile number :-)
theCrowing 4y ago
It's a carrier side setting...lol.
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
iPhone too, not just Android. At least in Germany, and Israel.
- f1shy 4y ago
  No required. In iOS can be disabled. Also in Germany.
  - Tomte 4y ago
    No, the highest level cannot be disabled.
    - f1shy 4y ago
      I have 2 phones. In one I disabled it, and did not get the alarm. The other one was enabled and received the alarm. It can be disabled. Period.
255kb 4y ago
1) yes, but only got the warning once. 2) I think you need to root and disable OTA updates, but never tried. 3) Hate it, but I think it's a drop in an ocean of control, and probably way more harmless than depending on Google for everything (at least in my case). Not an Apple user, but apparently this is also a thing on Apple devices: https://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/11558938/what-is-this-carrier-settings-update-on-my-iphone-ipad https://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/11558938/what-is-this-carrier-...
- WirelessGigabit 4y ago
  OTA updates are updates to the OS, not the settings.
petodo 4y ago
Yes, I am aware carrier can control carrier/network settings since those are loaded from network anyway, you can try to override them, but obviously if it's something like Cell Broadcast, call forwarding/barring or caller ID and others, carrier can decide to use different settingh from yours. I feel like you are confusing local Android settings with carrier settings loaded from network. For instance carrier is not going to change setting of your default keyboard or ringtone without (carrier customized) system update.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  Thank you. I should have been more explicit. The settings I am referring to are under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts". They are about controlling whether to and which alerts one wants to receive on their phone. This not only seems very user-facing to me, it's also something I definitely would want to have control over. It's an unlocked Android One device. The carrier seems to be able to remotely change these settings (see the referenced Reddit post as well), which I would never expect. It seems to be because of the SIM the phone uses and the network it connects to. No user-controlled software change like updates. Does my surprise make more sense now?
  - petodo 4y ago
    It doesn't really matter under what setting it's placed in the OS, but "emergency alerts" or CB is clearly network setting/service, so it's not surprising carrier can control status of this setting/service and override what you set in the phone.
    - blep_ 4y ago
      Not... really? It's not the setting for whether the phone receives alerts; it's the setting for what the UI does in response (make a bunch of noise vs accept silently). The UI is very much on the user-controlled side of the phone.
      - petodo 4y ago
ddalex 4y ago
It's part of the mandated law in certain countries so it's normal to be implemented there.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  I was not aware this could be done remotely explicitly going against settings the user himself has set.
  - ratg13 4y ago
    It’s a carrier setting, you are merely expressing a preference.
  - ddalex 4y ago
    Phone (call, data) interception is mandated in a lot of countries (i.e. operators have to do it is presented with a judicial mandate) against the wishes of user too. This setting is in the same vein, in order to allow authority controlled public broadcasts.
    - TreeRingCounter 4y ago
      Governments hijacking infrastructure is not remotely the same as governments hijacking personal devices.
      - ddalex 4y ago
        You are at mercy of the whims of your local government. You don't like it? Then fight to join the local government.
        TreeRingCounter 4y ago
      - ratg13 4y ago
        They are not hijacking your personal device. Your personal device is letting you know your carrier does not provide an option for this setting.
7steps2much 4y ago
(1) I wasn't aware of it, but I am not surprised that something like this was written into the standard (presumably. I doubt carriers rolled their own thing) (2) All the ways I can think off are significantly harder than rooting, so essentially no. (3) I don't really mind that much, I have Google services running on my phone and I am certain those can do far more than my carrier could ever dream off. I have begrudgingly accepted those, so it would be a bit hypocritical to complain about my carrier turning cell broadcast back on. Especially since "turning cell broadcast back on" is a use case that I can see the argument behind. It you care about this then I suggest you look up the relevant standard documents, probably you will find this behavior documented there.
- michaelmior 4y ago
  > written into the standard What standard are you referring to?
  - sumtechguy 4y ago
    Parts of it are in the GSM, CDMA, CDMA2000, '3g', LTE, 4g/5g standards. They are thousands of pages long. They do quite a bit. Usually baked into the firmware from whoever makes the chipset.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
N_A_T_E 4y ago
IMHO, carrier settings are a small portion and not super impactful part of the phone configuration you see in the settings list. This is actually a somewhat cool feature. Imagine going to another country, jumping on another network and your phone automatically knows what cell bands and towers to connect to. Carriers can't change regular settings like language, lock screen code or background. Just what cell towers you connect to and a short list of telephony related features. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  The part you mention I was aware of and am actually thankful for. This, at least to me, goes much further. Hence the shock. Updated my post w/more details so it makes more sense (hopefully).
  - unilynx 4y ago
    I don't know if this happens in The Netherlands, but if they forced your phone to receive NL Alerts it would seem very reasonable to me. Only the government issues those. I've understood cell broadcasts are also used for advertisements/otherwise spammy stuff in eg. the US? Then I could understand you considering cell broadcast being turned on being unreasonable
    - michaelt 4y ago
      The fact the government issues the alerts doesn't mean the government won't get pressured into sending spammy messages. For example, what politician could turn down the grieving parents of a kidnapped child, when they call for using the emergency alert system for missing children? But if I work from home, and there aren't any kidnapped children in my home, then waking me up at 5am with a missing child alert just inconveniences for no benefit to anyone.
      - VLM 4y ago
        > inconveniences for no benefit to anyone. Everyone will be forced to see how much they care which proves how good they are, like it or not! Stranger than waking people up from sleep for a custody disagreement, is when they'd broadcast those on TV... The purpose of those is not to find the kid, but to send a message to TV viewers, none of whom would be of any assistance in finding the kid. You see this display of "care" with storm sirens being set off after the storm already passed the area.
Fradow 4y ago
(1) Yeah, though I definitely forgot. In my country, it used to be really hard to find a plan with mobile hotspot, which used to be a x€/month (don't remember the number) option that would just hide the setting. That was a very long time ago since I saw on but I think some plans still have those restrictions and use that method to enforce it. (2) Changing to a device that doesn't have that feature. Which probably means no Android and no iOS. I would not be willing to do so, I'd change carrier instead if it was problematic enough to me. (3) I don't mind when it's to set settings for a good reason. I assume some settings are configured that way for the phone to properly work on the carrier network. On the other hand, I hate it when it's to enforce a stupid thing or extract more money from a built-in feature.
izacus 4y ago
Yes, Cell Broadcasts are controllable by carriers and that's even mandated in some countries (e.g in USA the carrier can send out a broadcast that will ignore all "silent phone" settings and scream loudly no matter what you've set and where). This will happen on all phones allowed to be used in those regions - whether Apple, Google, Samsung, Nokia or even Huawei. You can attempt to disable it, but you need to be aware that in many places it's outright illegal for phone manufacturer and carrier to allow that.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  > e.g in USA the carrier can send out a broadcast that will ignore all "silent phone" settings and scream loudly no matter what you've set and where My iOS settings and experience differ from this rather greatly - can you cite any such laws or regulations? I have clear settings on my up to date ios device in the US, on a large American carrier that allow me to a)ignore emergency alerts, b) get them but silently if my phone is in silent mode, or c) allow them through at full blast.
  - izacus 4y ago
    There are types of broadcasts even in US (IIRC Presidental broadcasts, but don't quote me on that) that will ignore your settings. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202743 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202743 - note the little "3" note where it says that some broadcasts in some regions can't be disabled?
tehCorner 4y ago
I used to work for a carrier and yes, there are some settings that can be changed. If your phone is locked to a carrier it can even hot-replace applications without you noticing (useful for embedded carrier applications that donwload a full APK when you open the one installed in the device by default) I believe these varies by country, since this was done for a limited set of countries my Company sas operating on
- amazon_illegal 4y ago
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  If you can do it, or your phone is able to do it. Then it can be done remotely by the carrier and sometimes the ODM. Usually initiated by SMS that you will never see.
msingh_5 4y ago
These are emergency broadcast alerts. Different countries have different laws on these - and in some countries you might not even be able to disable them. Just because its listed under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts", it doesn't mean they are "user settings". Its not necessarily the local "carrier" that turned the settings on, its more that connecting to a cell tower in a particular jurisdiction can enforce receiving emergency alerts. More on the EU alerts systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert
- bjt2n3904 4y ago
  Just because another country has a law does not mean my phone should disregard what I told it to do. This absolutely is a user setting. How far we've fallen from sharing the DeCSS flag, to arguing that users shouldn't have control over their devices, and governments and carriers should.
  - isodev 4y ago
    The local (EU) law about emergency broadcast is clear in that it applies to both residents and visitors, and alerts are to be delivered without the need for “opt-in”. In other words, if you’re in range of local services, you must receive the alerts (which, you know, is handy in case of an actual emergency).
    - bjt2n3904 4y ago
      Gotcha. I'll just draft a law saying all devices must automatically unencrypt themselves when they enter my country's borders. Hey, it's the law! You must comply, and for your convenience, your phone will do that automatically for you! Good grief.
      - warkdarrior 4y ago
        If you do not like the regulation, fight to change it. Do not expect your devices to do the fighting for you.
mFixman 4y ago
Back in the day my phone carrier in Argentina would send me ultra-high-priority alerts with ads several times a day. A lot of people in this thread are understandably okay with good carriers doing this for good reasons, but it's very easy to abuse if there aren't strong enough communication laws. From the amount of spam I got when I lived there, I'm surprised this is not happening in America.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Wow, that's obnoxious. I'm sorry you had to suffer that. I live in Brazil and I get constant advertising and phisshing SMS messages, it got to the point I had to kill SMS notifications and forget it even exists. I still get robots trying to call me at random times during the day, there seems to be no way to turn off telephony but it's less disruptive. If my phone had unblockable advertising disguised as high priority disaster alerts I think I'd throw it off a bridge.
  - slim 4y ago
    use Silence app from fdroid. it let's you mute sms selectively
lotux 4y ago
I think carriers can inject apps via sim card too https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyNote8/comments/71of1t/carrier_app_installed_automatically_upon_sim_card/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyNote8/comments/71of1t/carrier...
ppcdeveloper 4y ago
Absolutely they can. Carriers have access to the system partition aka We do what we want (hopefully they do what makes sense). This is how bloatware is installed (the things you can't get ride of).
- fgeiger 4y ago
  Are you sure this is the case? All the carrier app loading implementations that I am aware of (this is a small number) explicitly whitelist some carriers or even some apps by certain carriers. For instance, the implementation I worked on myself (as a reviewer) only granted a single carrier to load one of their apps when the SIM card was inserted. With that implementation, it would not be possible for any random carrier in a foreign country to load random bloat onto my phone just by me crossing the border to that country.
- counttheforks 4y ago
  Your thinking is tainted by the american model where you buy carrier locked phones. But no, that is not usually how it works. The system partition can be modified by the party who issues system updates. Normally this would be the company making the phone, such as Samsung. But in the US, some carriers sell modified phones locked to their network, and in that case the carrier is also the one shipping updates.
  - ppcdeveloper 4y ago
    Worked at Sprint back in the day and we (I) had to do this. Special certificates to produce a special OS build with the right privileges (carrier specific). The carriers and builders (Samsung etc) work together to get this in place. That on top of zero rating data being sent out for tracking allow the carrier (or builder) to do what they want.
BanjoBass 4y ago
Pretty sure they're "required" in Germany and cannot be disabled by the user. You travel to other countries, you abide by their laws. This is no different.
- f1shy 4y ago
  No required. In iOS can be disabled.
  - Tomte 4y ago
    The highest level cannot. We just had a nationwide test in Germany a few days ago.
    - f1shy 4y ago
      I have 2 phones. In one I disabled it, and did not get the alarm. The other one was enabled and received the alarm. It can be disabled. Period.
diffeomorphism 4y ago
1) seems pretty obvious. 2) you don't. 3) perfectly fine.
nicholasjarnold 4y ago
> I must say I strongly dislike losing control over my own device. It feels dystopian to me. Even with a rooted device where perhaps you personally coded up the ROM you are still missing a piece which is the binary blob that runs the baseband radio. That firmware is, afaik, not something which exists in any sort of open-source or rootable manner. It's a closed blob running proprietary software on your phone, and it runs at a lower level than the ROM/OS does. So, even if you go to great lengths to secure most of the software that runs on the device (a noble goal, it's your hardware after all!) then you still must contend with the uncertainty and perhaps risk (depending on your threat model) of that untrusted code running there. You can search around the web for articles covering baseband radio exploits that span the years...
- cameronh90 4y ago
  Moreover, some of these settings restrictions are encouraged or mandatory for the FCC/Ofcom/your-local-radio-regulator to certify your device. This is to prevent people from doing naughty things with the spectrum.
- john61 4y ago
  For the PinePhone you can install a free OS running the Baseband Processor: https://hackaday.com/2022/07/12/open-firmware-for-pinephone-lte-modem-whats-up-with-that/ https://hackaday.com/2022/07/12/open-firmware-for-pinephone-... Probably illegal and the firmware running the radio hardware is still proprietary.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    That's partially open source software on the broader Quectel EC25-G modem, but not the Qualcomm’s MDM9207 baseband that the modem uses. > Not everything is open in this firmware. The baseband firmware, aka the RF bits known as ADSP firmware, remains closed and not yet reverse-engineered by anyone – you’re not gonna be running OpenBTS on this modem yet. > The TrustZone kernel remains closed too – my understanding is that it’s signed by Qualcomm.
- kelnos 4y ago
yourusername 4y ago
I've disabled them on my phone because it's always either a test or some nonsense "it's too busy in <town> 10km away, stay away". Alerts they would never turn on the sirens for. I'd be very annoyed if my carrier re-enabled alerts.
- syntheticnature 4y ago
  Where I am I've been fortunate that the weather alerts have generally been for critical situations such as tornadoes. The Amber alerts, OTOH, have been usually across the state and of debatable usefulness[0]. 0: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2014.1003577 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2014.10...
jamal-kumar 4y ago
In Germany people may not be as used to natural disasters and the like, but where I've travelled where the weather is way more extreme, these are like life saving emergency alerts so you don't get sucked into a tornado like a cow or die in a flood or tsunami. I love how jarring the alerts are, there was an incident in the USA recently where some way too close menu entry got hit at an emergency alert center for a nuclear bomb and people ended up taking cover thinking they were going to get nuked in Hawaii [1]. The USA system you can understand the technical workings of here [2] while this seems to cover more of the technical workings of the EU systems [3] - These are simply service area broadcasts [4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdmkTkWB40Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdmkTkWB40Q [3] https://media.ccc.de/v/osmodevcon2019-107-production-grade-cell-broadcast-for-osmocom/audio https://media.ccc.de/v/osmodevcon2019-107-production-grade-c... [4] https://osmocom.org/projects/cellular-infrastructure/wiki/Service_Area_Broadcast https://osmocom.org/projects/cellular-infrastructure/wiki/Se...
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  You can turn off all the government alerts in iOS, in the US at least. I have had them all off for many years since one woke me up in the middle of the night for no reason.
  - jcollins1991 4y ago
    Quite the opposite in Canada unfortunately, specifically Ontario but other provinces may be a joke as well... Can't turn off alerts, and we're well known for sending them out in the middle of the night, or just sending test alerts with no significant value. Thankfully silent mode turns them into vibrations, I feel sorry for those who use ringtones. Moved back here after living in SF for so long and this feels ass backwards, far preferred the optionality y'all are given.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      That is unfortunate. The alert that caused me to turn them all off was even written about in the news that day. Millions of people in the entire NYC metro region had their sleep disturbed and were pissed. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/07/ambert-alert-phone-4-am-new-york.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/07/ambert-alert-phone-4... I remember group chats of people discussing how to turn it off and my friends and I telling our parents how to turn them off.
supermatou 4y ago
I'm experiencing the opposite; my wife and I have the same iPhone model (13), with the OS up to date. When we bought the phones, 18 months ago, I customized them to have identical settings; while doing that, I also disabled the Amber Alerts. Still, a few weeks ago, our phones started to emit an unheard (til then) sound in the middle of the night: it was an Amber Alert. WTH? did any of the OS updates enable the AA? I looked at the phones and - hey, where did that setting go? the alerts are no longer visible in Notifications. What's weird, is the fact that you can type "Govern" (for Government Alerts) in the Search field, and Notifications comes up - but, when you go into Notifications, there's nothing there. I googled the issue and it's affecting quite a lot of people. It's unclear whether the culprit is the provider or a long-standing bug in iOS (the first mention I found is a few years old). Some people suggested that you take out the SIM and the options would reappear. Didn't work in my case.
- warkdarrior 4y ago
  On my iPhone 12 running iOS 16, the "Government Alerts" section is at the bottom of the Notification settings screen, just need to scroll down for it.
burritas 4y ago
A little tangential, but carriers and hackers can execute arbitrary code on your device through OTA updates with the baseband modem. It's even been done on 5G. Which also reminds me how the NSA has intentionally crippled standards in the past so they could eavesdrop or inject code without having to go through the carrier. This means Johnny Scriptsalot can do it too.
ddtaylor 4y ago
Carriers can actually send arbitrary AT commands which are more or less arbitrary modem commands. Depending on how deep you think the integration between the broadband controller and the CPU are they could potentially also do much more. I wouldn't trust much on any phone.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Wait until your learn what a country or local government/police can do remotely to the baseband firmware of your phone with a court order... 10-20 years ago the FBI was regularly remotely programming firmware to listen in and record cell phone microphones to capture conversations of suspects. IIRC a mafia case hinged on data gathered in this way so it is not some abstract theoretical or crackpot theory (https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as...). It's only gotten worse as phones have gotten more capable. You don't own squat about the device in your pocket at all times.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Are attacks like these still possible? I've read here on HN that hardware makers are isolating the baseband processor as much as possible to prevent attacks like these. Surely there are countermeasures?
  - ActorNightly 4y ago
    Most modern phones have signed firmware for everything, so the FBI would have to go to the manufacturer and court order them to hand over the signing key. Or take advantage of a leaked key.
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      What I meant was chips are increasingly being isolated at the hardware level so that they cannot access other peripherals directly. This would make them resistant to compromised firmware attacks. People are discussing that in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33958252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33958252 It looks like the implementation isn't perfect yet but it's a start.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      I really wouldn't be surprised if some three letter agency hasn't shown up to every one of the major chip manufactures out there and forced them to install backdoors for them.
Kiboneu 4y ago
Absolutely, they can change this setting, in lots of different ways. Originally emergency services were set up by fields offered by the SIM. Occasionally these settings change, so an update mechanism had to be established. - Android comes with a list of carriers and their required configurations; when the MNC and MMC provided by the SIM match a carrier on that list, Android uses the configuration from that list. This list updates with Android updates, and so SIM don't have to be reprogrammed. - Modern SIMs just Java cards with a SIM app (especially if they offer IMS). The Java cards also have a secure storage element to hold subscriber keys and mitigate tampering to change these keys. They also contain signing public keys which is queried by Android whenever /Carrier Privileges/ are requested. That way, an app signed by a carrier can very against the carrier's SIM in order to get access to this configuration. - There are remote configuration protocols, so Android will have a bare configuration for carriers just to fetch the latest configuration from them (to then use it). This has been happening for quite a while. If you use(d) a carrier app for voicemail or setting up the service for the first time, you've used this. Except nowadays it seems Android actually /informs/ you about it. https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/uicc https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/uicc https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/carrier https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/carrier One could probably write a rooted Android ROM that filters / requests user permission / logs changes to carrier settings, and there's utility in that since it may be a vector for espionage / traffic redirection (provided stolen keys or an exploit of the SIM's certificate storage machinery). SIM cards are usually directly connected to the CPU, not to the baseband.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  Thank you for the detailed pointers.
- nanidin 4y ago
  See the Verizon OMA-DM spec[0] for one of those remote configuration protocols. It’s mostly used for configuring APN’s and other carrier specific settings to get the phone working on the network. [0] https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/content/dam/opendevelopment/pdf/OpenAccessReq/Reqs-LTE_OTADM_Oct2018.pdf https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/content/dam/open...
lizardactivist 4y ago
Not sure if it's related or just Apple's data-greed and malice, but on a previous iPhone, iMessage and FaceTime would turn on by itself every time the phone was restarted, again 24 hrs later, and one final time 48 hrs after that.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  That sounds horrible.
exabrial 4y ago
If you don't have root access to your phone (or baseband), you have no control over it. That's Google and Apple's plan. In Apple's own words "It's their platform"
willyt 4y ago
I can totally understand why Americans would want to silence these. I'm from the UK and I was in Central Park with my wife and kids when we got an 'Amber Alert' which said something like 'Black Ford SUV reg XYZ123' or something equally cryptic. It was not long after the terrorist attack in Nice where a guy drove a truck thorough a crowd of people walking beside the beach. Everyone's phones started going at the same time and we assumed it was some kind of disaster warning (the second worst level of disaster after a Red Alert?) as did many other tourists in the park! It went off again on the subway on the way back to the apartment and all the New Yorkers were totally unfazed by it. I asked the woman next to me what it was, she just said ignore it. I googled it later and it turned out an ex boyfriend had not showed up from picking their daughter up from school in a small town at the other end of New York state a couple of hundred miles away. Talk about crying wolf, I hope they have a different sound for when there actually is an inbound rogue North Korean nuke, otherwise 20 million people are going to think 'fuck's sake' and silence their phones without looking...
- petee 4y ago
  Ex boyfriend disappearing with a child is totally worth an Amber Alert, and a couple hundred miles is only a couple hours drive by the time they put the alert out...its easy enough to just keep an eye out for a license plate. Nobody is going to know for sure if its a false alarm, or if we'll wind up with a murdered child until after the fact, so why wait or ignore it?
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Clearly you haven't been involved in a child custody case. If you had, you'd know the kinds of tricks people will play, up-to-and-including falsely claiming the child has been kidnapped and is under threat. Family court never, and I mean NEVER, holds anyone accountable for false accusation, and there is a subset of family law attorneys in every town who knows this and uses it, if they get a chance. The collateral damage, "boy who cried wolf" style, is just another unhappy side-effect of this practice. As for the risk of a murdered child, well, if that argument works for you, then why stop there? Why should police have to wait for a search warrant...what if we end up with a murdered child? Why should police have to avoid using deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect...what if we end up with a murdered child? Of course, we already have a (rather large, vocal) group of people who believe exactly this, which is why CPS is called on parents who, for example, run into a bakery, with their minivan idling with 6 kids in it, and get arrested for child endangerment. It's easier to take an extreme, confident position when you don't know anything about it.
kornhole 4y ago
If you are using the Android OS originally installed on the phone, you can deactivate many of these at the OS level (not baseband) using ADB. This does not require rooting. An easy way to find and deactivate these codes is to use the UAD (Universal Android Debloater) found on Github.
- zulban 4y ago
  Yes. I can confirm this worked on a non rooted phone in Canada. GUI settings were being ignored. I think the first alert I confirmed not getting was for a weather warning 500 km away.
- mehdix 4y ago
  Not-surprisingly, my rooted Android 9 phone didn't receive any alert, while my non-root device did.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  Thank you for pointing me in this direction. I will have a look at this.
pfoof 4y ago
Related, specification from 2019. https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102900_102999/102900/01.03.01_60/ts_102900v010301p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102900_102999/102900/01... Check Security Considerstions in 5.5.
- brainchild-adam 4y ago
  Thank you.
jmole 4y ago
I bought a Pixel 7 recently. When setting up the device, I was asked to insert my SIM card. Usually, I'd have skipped past this screen, but I thought "Ok, let me swap out my SIM", since I was trading in an older device. Worst mistake ever. Even on an unlocked phone, all the verizon crapware was silently installed in the background. This doesn't happen when you put in the SIM after setting up the phone. Such a backwards experience.
- thih9 4y ago
  Sneaky. Is it reversible? As in: can you eject the sim, reset the phone to factory defaults and restart the setup process, now inserting the sim card later?
- dustyharddrive 4y ago
  Could this have happened on Graphene/Calyx/Lineage/Divest?
precommunicator 4y ago
Similar thing is with call recording, as one of my SIM card is from Germany my phone doesn't allow me to enable call recording, but, as I don't live in Germany, and it's legal to do so here, I have a manufacturer-specific app (3rd party, ofc) that basically runs in background and periodically and on boot, re-enables this setting. Wonder if something similar could be made, or exists for your phone.
remram 4y ago
Leaving the evil carrier issue aside, how much security is there? I know GSM security is not very good, as older protocols are kept around for decades. Is there strong crypto preventing anyone who's not a carrier or government from changing settings on device?
_trampeltier 4y ago
Is there a full list, what carriers can do and change in your phone?
Doorstep2077 4y ago
Doesn't surprise me tbh, although I'm curious if different countries have different policies regarding this. E.G. in privacy-centric countries like Iceland, are there stricter rules / regulations?
MiddleEndian 4y ago
Doesn't surprise me, Android lets carriers and manufacturers install all sorts of garbage you can't remove. It's a pretty terrible operating system. I just disable amber alerts when I get a new phone, never gotten any other type of alert in the US, haven't ever gotten an alert in another country. I also hear that Canada sends out amber alerts with an unblockable "presidential" priority, so if I were ever to move to Canada, I would figure out how to disable that type of alert as well.
- doubled112 4y ago
  Tornado? Nuclear strike? Missing child? It's all the same level of danger, right?
EastSmith 4y ago
We need Linux phone.
vanillax 4y ago
What if you remove the sim card? What can they do?
wintogreen74 4y ago
what the?
hnarn 4y ago
It’s very difficult for me, in all honesty, to even understand why the act of emergency alerts being re-enabled by a carrier leads to this kind of reaction.

gershy 4y ago

I didn't read the full legal contract that came with my phone, but I assume it enumerates (in soporific detail) many of the ways in which I don't control my device. The price of convenience is a real doozy!

jjgreen 4y ago

(1) No, but not surprised, (2) don't have a phone, (3) I don't like it, that's why I don't have a phone.

brainchild-adam 4y ago
How do you manage w/o a phone? Some of our bank accounts require using an Android (or iPhone) app, for example. Messengers like Signal don't work w/o a smartphone. COVID-related apps for traveling. I could continue. Genuinely curious.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > bank Choosing your bank according to the provision of acceptable services. > messengers You just need an OS somewhere (not necessarily a smartphone) > travelling Cannot really help: if some administration requested a smartphone, I would either try to avoid it or buy some provisional, temporary thing.
- aliqot 4y ago
  I don't use or carry a phone. The long and short of it boils down to things working just the way they do with a phone, just more human involvement, like requesting a paper menu, or handing someone money directly. You make plans to be at a place at a time, then you just show up.
- jjgreen 4y ago
  Note really an issue, I've never had one. Banking is mostly on paper, sometimes I phone them up. Not bothered with messengers, travelling in the EU, there was always a paper-form alternative for that. The main upside is the looks of disbelief (and occasional panic) when you respond "don't have one" to a demand for mobile number :-)

theCrowing 4y ago

It's a carrier side setting...lol.

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago

iPhone too, not just Android. At least in Germany, and Israel.

f1shy 4y ago
No required. In iOS can be disabled. Also in Germany.
- Tomte 4y ago
  No, the highest level cannot be disabled.
  - f1shy 4y ago
    I have 2 phones. In one I disabled it, and did not get the alarm. The other one was enabled and received the alarm. It can be disabled. Period.

255kb 4y ago

1) yes, but only got the warning once. 2) I think you need to root and disable OTA updates, but never tried. 3) Hate it, but I think it's a drop in an ocean of control, and probably way more harmless than depending on Google for everything (at least in my case). Not an Apple user, but apparently this is also a thing on Apple devices: https://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/11558938/what-is-this-carrier-settings-update-on-my-iphone-ipad https://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/11558938/what-is-this-carrier-...

WirelessGigabit 4y ago
OTA updates are updates to the OS, not the settings.

petodo 4y ago

Yes, I am aware carrier can control carrier/network settings since those are loaded from network anyway, you can try to override them, but obviously if it's something like Cell Broadcast, call forwarding/barring or caller ID and others, carrier can decide to use different settingh from yours. I feel like you are confusing local Android settings with carrier settings loaded from network. For instance carrier is not going to change setting of your default keyboard or ringtone without (carrier customized) system update.

brainchild-adam 4y ago
Thank you. I should have been more explicit. The settings I am referring to are under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts". They are about controlling whether to and which alerts one wants to receive on their phone. This not only seems very user-facing to me, it's also something I definitely would want to have control over. It's an unlocked Android One device. The carrier seems to be able to remotely change these settings (see the referenced Reddit post as well), which I would never expect. It seems to be because of the SIM the phone uses and the network it connects to. No user-controlled software change like updates. Does my surprise make more sense now?
- petodo 4y ago
  It doesn't really matter under what setting it's placed in the OS, but "emergency alerts" or CB is clearly network setting/service, so it's not surprising carrier can control status of this setting/service and override what you set in the phone.
  - blep_ 4y ago
    Not... really? It's not the setting for whether the phone receives alerts; it's the setting for what the UI does in response (make a bunch of noise vs accept silently). The UI is very much on the user-controlled side of the phone.
    - petodo 4y ago

ddalex 4y ago

It's part of the mandated law in certain countries so it's normal to be implemented there.

brainchild-adam 4y ago
I was not aware this could be done remotely explicitly going against settings the user himself has set.
- ratg13 4y ago
  It’s a carrier setting, you are merely expressing a preference.
- ddalex 4y ago
  Phone (call, data) interception is mandated in a lot of countries (i.e. operators have to do it is presented with a judicial mandate) against the wishes of user too. This setting is in the same vein, in order to allow authority controlled public broadcasts.
  - TreeRingCounter 4y ago
    Governments hijacking infrastructure is not remotely the same as governments hijacking personal devices.
    - ddalex 4y ago
      You are at mercy of the whims of your local government. You don't like it? Then fight to join the local government.
      - TreeRingCounter 4y ago
    - ratg13 4y ago
      They are not hijacking your personal device. Your personal device is letting you know your carrier does not provide an option for this setting.

7steps2much 4y ago

(1) I wasn't aware of it, but I am not surprised that something like this was written into the standard (presumably. I doubt carriers rolled their own thing) (2) All the ways I can think off are significantly harder than rooting, so essentially no. (3) I don't really mind that much, I have Google services running on my phone and I am certain those can do far more than my carrier could ever dream off. I have begrudgingly accepted those, so it would be a bit hypocritical to complain about my carrier turning cell broadcast back on. Especially since "turning cell broadcast back on" is a use case that I can see the argument behind. It you care about this then I suggest you look up the relevant standard documents, probably you will find this behavior documented there.

michaelmior 4y ago
> written into the standard What standard are you referring to?
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  Parts of it are in the GSM, CDMA, CDMA2000, '3g', LTE, 4g/5g standards. They are thousands of pages long. They do quite a bit. Usually baked into the firmware from whoever makes the chipset.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

N_A_T_E 4y ago

IMHO, carrier settings are a small portion and not super impactful part of the phone configuration you see in the settings list. This is actually a somewhat cool feature. Imagine going to another country, jumping on another network and your phone automatically knows what cell bands and towers to connect to. Carriers can't change regular settings like language, lock screen code or background. Just what cell towers you connect to and a short list of telephony related features. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

brainchild-adam 4y ago
The part you mention I was aware of and am actually thankful for. This, at least to me, goes much further. Hence the shock. Updated my post w/more details so it makes more sense (hopefully).
- unilynx 4y ago
  I don't know if this happens in The Netherlands, but if they forced your phone to receive NL Alerts it would seem very reasonable to me. Only the government issues those. I've understood cell broadcasts are also used for advertisements/otherwise spammy stuff in eg. the US? Then I could understand you considering cell broadcast being turned on being unreasonable
  - michaelt 4y ago
    The fact the government issues the alerts doesn't mean the government won't get pressured into sending spammy messages. For example, what politician could turn down the grieving parents of a kidnapped child, when they call for using the emergency alert system for missing children? But if I work from home, and there aren't any kidnapped children in my home, then waking me up at 5am with a missing child alert just inconveniences for no benefit to anyone.
    - VLM 4y ago
      > inconveniences for no benefit to anyone. Everyone will be forced to see how much they care which proves how good they are, like it or not! Stranger than waking people up from sleep for a custody disagreement, is when they'd broadcast those on TV... The purpose of those is not to find the kid, but to send a message to TV viewers, none of whom would be of any assistance in finding the kid. You see this display of "care" with storm sirens being set off after the storm already passed the area.

Fradow 4y ago

(1) Yeah, though I definitely forgot. In my country, it used to be really hard to find a plan with mobile hotspot, which used to be a x€/month (don't remember the number) option that would just hide the setting. That was a very long time ago since I saw on but I think some plans still have those restrictions and use that method to enforce it. (2) Changing to a device that doesn't have that feature. Which probably means no Android and no iOS. I would not be willing to do so, I'd change carrier instead if it was problematic enough to me. (3) I don't mind when it's to set settings for a good reason. I assume some settings are configured that way for the phone to properly work on the carrier network. On the other hand, I hate it when it's to enforce a stupid thing or extract more money from a built-in feature.

izacus 4y ago

Yes, Cell Broadcasts are controllable by carriers and that's even mandated in some countries (e.g in USA the carrier can send out a broadcast that will ignore all "silent phone" settings and scream loudly no matter what you've set and where). This will happen on all phones allowed to be used in those regions - whether Apple, Google, Samsung, Nokia or even Huawei. You can attempt to disable it, but you need to be aware that in many places it's outright illegal for phone manufacturer and carrier to allow that.

happyopossum 4y ago
> e.g in USA the carrier can send out a broadcast that will ignore all "silent phone" settings and scream loudly no matter what you've set and where My iOS settings and experience differ from this rather greatly - can you cite any such laws or regulations? I have clear settings on my up to date ios device in the US, on a large American carrier that allow me to a)ignore emergency alerts, b) get them but silently if my phone is in silent mode, or c) allow them through at full blast.
- izacus 4y ago
  There are types of broadcasts even in US (IIRC Presidental broadcasts, but don't quote me on that) that will ignore your settings. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202743 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202743 - note the little "3" note where it says that some broadcasts in some regions can't be disabled?

tehCorner 4y ago

I used to work for a carrier and yes, there are some settings that can be changed. If your phone is locked to a carrier it can even hot-replace applications without you noticing (useful for embedded carrier applications that donwload a full APK when you open the one installed in the device by default) I believe these varies by country, since this was done for a limited set of countries my Company sas operating on

amazon_illegal 4y ago
sumtechguy 4y ago
If you can do it, or your phone is able to do it. Then it can be done remotely by the carrier and sometimes the ODM. Usually initiated by SMS that you will never see.

msingh_5 4y ago

These are emergency broadcast alerts. Different countries have different laws on these - and in some countries you might not even be able to disable them. Just because its listed under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts", it doesn't mean they are "user settings". Its not necessarily the local "carrier" that turned the settings on, its more that connecting to a cell tower in a particular jurisdiction can enforce receiving emergency alerts. More on the EU alerts systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert

bjt2n3904 4y ago
Just because another country has a law does not mean my phone should disregard what I told it to do. This absolutely is a user setting. How far we've fallen from sharing the DeCSS flag, to arguing that users shouldn't have control over their devices, and governments and carriers should.
- isodev 4y ago
  The local (EU) law about emergency broadcast is clear in that it applies to both residents and visitors, and alerts are to be delivered without the need for “opt-in”. In other words, if you’re in range of local services, you must receive the alerts (which, you know, is handy in case of an actual emergency).
  - bjt2n3904 4y ago
    Gotcha. I'll just draft a law saying all devices must automatically unencrypt themselves when they enter my country's borders. Hey, it's the law! You must comply, and for your convenience, your phone will do that automatically for you! Good grief.
    - warkdarrior 4y ago
      If you do not like the regulation, fight to change it. Do not expect your devices to do the fighting for you.

mFixman 4y ago

Back in the day my phone carrier in Argentina would send me ultra-high-priority alerts with ads several times a day. A lot of people in this thread are understandably okay with good carriers doing this for good reasons, but it's very easy to abuse if there aren't strong enough communication laws. From the amount of spam I got when I lived there, I'm surprised this is not happening in America.

matheusmoreira 4y ago
Wow, that's obnoxious. I'm sorry you had to suffer that. I live in Brazil and I get constant advertising and phisshing SMS messages, it got to the point I had to kill SMS notifications and forget it even exists. I still get robots trying to call me at random times during the day, there seems to be no way to turn off telephony but it's less disruptive. If my phone had unblockable advertising disguised as high priority disaster alerts I think I'd throw it off a bridge.
- slim 4y ago
  use Silence app from fdroid. it let's you mute sms selectively

lotux 4y ago

I think carriers can inject apps via sim card too https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyNote8/comments/71of1t/carrier_app_installed_automatically_upon_sim_card/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyNote8/comments/71of1t/carrier...

ppcdeveloper 4y ago

Absolutely they can. Carriers have access to the system partition aka We do what we want (hopefully they do what makes sense). This is how bloatware is installed (the things you can't get ride of).

fgeiger 4y ago
Are you sure this is the case? All the carrier app loading implementations that I am aware of (this is a small number) explicitly whitelist some carriers or even some apps by certain carriers. For instance, the implementation I worked on myself (as a reviewer) only granted a single carrier to load one of their apps when the SIM card was inserted. With that implementation, it would not be possible for any random carrier in a foreign country to load random bloat onto my phone just by me crossing the border to that country.
counttheforks 4y ago
Your thinking is tainted by the american model where you buy carrier locked phones. But no, that is not usually how it works. The system partition can be modified by the party who issues system updates. Normally this would be the company making the phone, such as Samsung. But in the US, some carriers sell modified phones locked to their network, and in that case the carrier is also the one shipping updates.
- ppcdeveloper 4y ago
  Worked at Sprint back in the day and we (I) had to do this. Special certificates to produce a special OS build with the right privileges (carrier specific). The carriers and builders (Samsung etc) work together to get this in place. That on top of zero rating data being sent out for tracking allow the carrier (or builder) to do what they want.

BanjoBass 4y ago

Pretty sure they're "required" in Germany and cannot be disabled by the user. You travel to other countries, you abide by their laws. This is no different.

f1shy 4y ago
No required. In iOS can be disabled.
- Tomte 4y ago
  The highest level cannot. We just had a nationwide test in Germany a few days ago.
  - f1shy 4y ago
    I have 2 phones. In one I disabled it, and did not get the alarm. The other one was enabled and received the alarm. It can be disabled. Period.

diffeomorphism 4y ago

1) seems pretty obvious. 2) you don't. 3) perfectly fine.

nicholasjarnold 4y ago

> I must say I strongly dislike losing control over my own device. It feels dystopian to me. Even with a rooted device where perhaps you personally coded up the ROM you are still missing a piece which is the binary blob that runs the baseband radio. That firmware is, afaik, not something which exists in any sort of open-source or rootable manner. It's a closed blob running proprietary software on your phone, and it runs at a lower level than the ROM/OS does. So, even if you go to great lengths to secure most of the software that runs on the device (a noble goal, it's your hardware after all!) then you still must contend with the uncertainty and perhaps risk (depending on your threat model) of that untrusted code running there. You can search around the web for articles covering baseband radio exploits that span the years...

cameronh90 4y ago
Moreover, some of these settings restrictions are encouraged or mandatory for the FCC/Ofcom/your-local-radio-regulator to certify your device. This is to prevent people from doing naughty things with the spectrum.
john61 4y ago
For the PinePhone you can install a free OS running the Baseband Processor: https://hackaday.com/2022/07/12/open-firmware-for-pinephone-lte-modem-whats-up-with-that/ https://hackaday.com/2022/07/12/open-firmware-for-pinephone-... Probably illegal and the firmware running the radio hardware is still proprietary.
- kube-system 4y ago
  That's partially open source software on the broader Quectel EC25-G modem, but not the Qualcomm’s MDM9207 baseband that the modem uses. > Not everything is open in this firmware. The baseband firmware, aka the RF bits known as ADSP firmware, remains closed and not yet reverse-engineered by anyone – you’re not gonna be running OpenBTS on this modem yet. > The TrustZone kernel remains closed too – my understanding is that it’s signed by Qualcomm.
kelnos 4y ago

yourusername 4y ago

I've disabled them on my phone because it's always either a test or some nonsense "it's too busy in <town> 10km away, stay away". Alerts they would never turn on the sirens for. I'd be very annoyed if my carrier re-enabled alerts.

syntheticnature 4y ago
Where I am I've been fortunate that the weather alerts have generally been for critical situations such as tornadoes. The Amber alerts, OTOH, have been usually across the state and of debatable usefulness[0]. 0: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2014.1003577 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2014.10...

jamal-kumar 4y ago

In Germany people may not be as used to natural disasters and the like, but where I've travelled where the weather is way more extreme, these are like life saving emergency alerts so you don't get sucked into a tornado like a cow or die in a flood or tsunami. I love how jarring the alerts are, there was an incident in the USA recently where some way too close menu entry got hit at an emergency alert center for a nuclear bomb and people ended up taking cover thinking they were going to get nuked in Hawaii [1]. The USA system you can understand the technical workings of here [2] while this seems to cover more of the technical workings of the EU systems [3] - These are simply service area broadcasts [4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdmkTkWB40Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdmkTkWB40Q [3] https://media.ccc.de/v/osmodevcon2019-107-production-grade-cell-broadcast-for-osmocom/audio https://media.ccc.de/v/osmodevcon2019-107-production-grade-c... [4] https://osmocom.org/projects/cellular-infrastructure/wiki/Service_Area_Broadcast https://osmocom.org/projects/cellular-infrastructure/wiki/Se...

lotsofpulp 4y ago
You can turn off all the government alerts in iOS, in the US at least. I have had them all off for many years since one woke me up in the middle of the night for no reason.
- jcollins1991 4y ago
  Quite the opposite in Canada unfortunately, specifically Ontario but other provinces may be a joke as well... Can't turn off alerts, and we're well known for sending them out in the middle of the night, or just sending test alerts with no significant value. Thankfully silent mode turns them into vibrations, I feel sorry for those who use ringtones. Moved back here after living in SF for so long and this feels ass backwards, far preferred the optionality y'all are given.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    That is unfortunate. The alert that caused me to turn them all off was even written about in the news that day. Millions of people in the entire NYC metro region had their sleep disturbed and were pissed. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/07/ambert-alert-phone-4-am-new-york.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/07/ambert-alert-phone-4... I remember group chats of people discussing how to turn it off and my friends and I telling our parents how to turn them off.

supermatou 4y ago

I'm experiencing the opposite; my wife and I have the same iPhone model (13), with the OS up to date. When we bought the phones, 18 months ago, I customized them to have identical settings; while doing that, I also disabled the Amber Alerts. Still, a few weeks ago, our phones started to emit an unheard (til then) sound in the middle of the night: it was an Amber Alert. WTH? did any of the OS updates enable the AA? I looked at the phones and - hey, where did that setting go? the alerts are no longer visible in Notifications. What's weird, is the fact that you can type "Govern" (for Government Alerts) in the Search field, and Notifications comes up - but, when you go into Notifications, there's nothing there. I googled the issue and it's affecting quite a lot of people. It's unclear whether the culprit is the provider or a long-standing bug in iOS (the first mention I found is a few years old). Some people suggested that you take out the SIM and the options would reappear. Didn't work in my case.

warkdarrior 4y ago
On my iPhone 12 running iOS 16, the "Government Alerts" section is at the bottom of the Notification settings screen, just need to scroll down for it.

burritas 4y ago

A little tangential, but carriers and hackers can execute arbitrary code on your device through OTA updates with the baseband modem. It's even been done on 5G. Which also reminds me how the NSA has intentionally crippled standards in the past so they could eavesdrop or inject code without having to go through the carrier. This means Johnny Scriptsalot can do it too.

ddtaylor 4y ago

Carriers can actually send arbitrary AT commands which are more or less arbitrary modem commands. Depending on how deep you think the integration between the broadband controller and the CPU are they could potentially also do much more. I wouldn't trust much on any phone.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

Wait until your learn what a country or local government/police can do remotely to the baseband firmware of your phone with a court order... 10-20 years ago the FBI was regularly remotely programming firmware to listen in and record cell phone microphones to capture conversations of suspects. IIRC a mafia case hinged on data gathered in this way so it is not some abstract theoretical or crackpot theory (https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as...). It's only gotten worse as phones have gotten more capable. You don't own squat about the device in your pocket at all times.

matheusmoreira 4y ago
Are attacks like these still possible? I've read here on HN that hardware makers are isolating the baseband processor as much as possible to prevent attacks like these. Surely there are countermeasures?
- ActorNightly 4y ago
  Most modern phones have signed firmware for everything, so the FBI would have to go to the manufacturer and court order them to hand over the signing key. Or take advantage of a leaked key.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    What I meant was chips are increasingly being isolated at the hardware level so that they cannot access other peripherals directly. This would make them resistant to compromised firmware attacks. People are discussing that in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33958252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33958252 It looks like the implementation isn't perfect yet but it's a start.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    I really wouldn't be surprised if some three letter agency hasn't shown up to every one of the major chip manufactures out there and forced them to install backdoors for them.

Kiboneu 4y ago

Absolutely, they can change this setting, in lots of different ways. Originally emergency services were set up by fields offered by the SIM. Occasionally these settings change, so an update mechanism had to be established. - Android comes with a list of carriers and their required configurations; when the MNC and MMC provided by the SIM match a carrier on that list, Android uses the configuration from that list. This list updates with Android updates, and so SIM don't have to be reprogrammed. - Modern SIMs just Java cards with a SIM app (especially if they offer IMS). The Java cards also have a secure storage element to hold subscriber keys and mitigate tampering to change these keys. They also contain signing public keys which is queried by Android whenever /Carrier Privileges/ are requested. That way, an app signed by a carrier can very against the carrier's SIM in order to get access to this configuration. - There are remote configuration protocols, so Android will have a bare configuration for carriers just to fetch the latest configuration from them (to then use it). This has been happening for quite a while. If you use(d) a carrier app for voicemail or setting up the service for the first time, you've used this. Except nowadays it seems Android actually /informs/ you about it. https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/uicc https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/uicc https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/carrier https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/carrier One could probably write a rooted Android ROM that filters / requests user permission / logs changes to carrier settings, and there's utility in that since it may be a vector for espionage / traffic redirection (provided stolen keys or an exploit of the SIM's certificate storage machinery). SIM cards are usually directly connected to the CPU, not to the baseband.

brainchild-adam 4y ago
Thank you for the detailed pointers.
nanidin 4y ago
See the Verizon OMA-DM spec[0] for one of those remote configuration protocols. It’s mostly used for configuring APN’s and other carrier specific settings to get the phone working on the network. [0] https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/content/dam/opendevelopment/pdf/OpenAccessReq/Reqs-LTE_OTADM_Oct2018.pdf https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/content/dam/open...

lizardactivist 4y ago

Not sure if it's related or just Apple's data-greed and malice, but on a previous iPhone, iMessage and FaceTime would turn on by itself every time the phone was restarted, again 24 hrs later, and one final time 48 hrs after that.

brainchild-adam 4y ago
That sounds horrible.

exabrial 4y ago

If you don't have root access to your phone (or baseband), you have no control over it. That's Google and Apple's plan. In Apple's own words "It's their platform"

willyt 4y ago

I can totally understand why Americans would want to silence these. I'm from the UK and I was in Central Park with my wife and kids when we got an 'Amber Alert' which said something like 'Black Ford SUV reg XYZ123' or something equally cryptic. It was not long after the terrorist attack in Nice where a guy drove a truck thorough a crowd of people walking beside the beach. Everyone's phones started going at the same time and we assumed it was some kind of disaster warning (the second worst level of disaster after a Red Alert?) as did many other tourists in the park! It went off again on the subway on the way back to the apartment and all the New Yorkers were totally unfazed by it. I asked the woman next to me what it was, she just said ignore it. I googled it later and it turned out an ex boyfriend had not showed up from picking their daughter up from school in a small town at the other end of New York state a couple of hundred miles away. Talk about crying wolf, I hope they have a different sound for when there actually is an inbound rogue North Korean nuke, otherwise 20 million people are going to think 'fuck's sake' and silence their phones without looking...

petee 4y ago
Ex boyfriend disappearing with a child is totally worth an Amber Alert, and a couple hundred miles is only a couple hours drive by the time they put the alert out...its easy enough to just keep an eye out for a license plate. Nobody is going to know for sure if its a false alarm, or if we'll wind up with a murdered child until after the fact, so why wait or ignore it?
- javajosh 4y ago
  Clearly you haven't been involved in a child custody case. If you had, you'd know the kinds of tricks people will play, up-to-and-including falsely claiming the child has been kidnapped and is under threat. Family court never, and I mean NEVER, holds anyone accountable for false accusation, and there is a subset of family law attorneys in every town who knows this and uses it, if they get a chance. The collateral damage, "boy who cried wolf" style, is just another unhappy side-effect of this practice. As for the risk of a murdered child, well, if that argument works for you, then why stop there? Why should police have to wait for a search warrant...what if we end up with a murdered child? Why should police have to avoid using deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect...what if we end up with a murdered child? Of course, we already have a (rather large, vocal) group of people who believe exactly this, which is why CPS is called on parents who, for example, run into a bakery, with their minivan idling with 6 kids in it, and get arrested for child endangerment. It's easier to take an extreme, confident position when you don't know anything about it.

kornhole 4y ago

If you are using the Android OS originally installed on the phone, you can deactivate many of these at the OS level (not baseband) using ADB. This does not require rooting. An easy way to find and deactivate these codes is to use the UAD (Universal Android Debloater) found on Github.

zulban 4y ago
Yes. I can confirm this worked on a non rooted phone in Canada. GUI settings were being ignored. I think the first alert I confirmed not getting was for a weather warning 500 km away.
mehdix 4y ago
Not-surprisingly, my rooted Android 9 phone didn't receive any alert, while my non-root device did.
brainchild-adam 4y ago
Thank you for pointing me in this direction. I will have a look at this.

pfoof 4y ago

Related, specification from 2019. https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102900_102999/102900/01.03.01_60/ts_102900v010301p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102900_102999/102900/01... Check Security Considerstions in 5.5.

brainchild-adam 4y ago
Thank you.

jmole 4y ago

I bought a Pixel 7 recently. When setting up the device, I was asked to insert my SIM card. Usually, I'd have skipped past this screen, but I thought "Ok, let me swap out my SIM", since I was trading in an older device. Worst mistake ever. Even on an unlocked phone, all the verizon crapware was silently installed in the background. This doesn't happen when you put in the SIM after setting up the phone. Such a backwards experience.

thih9 4y ago
Sneaky. Is it reversible? As in: can you eject the sim, reset the phone to factory defaults and restart the setup process, now inserting the sim card later?
dustyharddrive 4y ago
Could this have happened on Graphene/Calyx/Lineage/Divest?

precommunicator 4y ago

Similar thing is with call recording, as one of my SIM card is from Germany my phone doesn't allow me to enable call recording, but, as I don't live in Germany, and it's legal to do so here, I have a manufacturer-specific app (3rd party, ofc) that basically runs in background and periodically and on boot, re-enables this setting. Wonder if something similar could be made, or exists for your phone.

remram 4y ago

Leaving the evil carrier issue aside, how much security is there? I know GSM security is not very good, as older protocols are kept around for decades. Is there strong crypto preventing anyone who's not a carrier or government from changing settings on device?

_trampeltier 4y ago

Is there a full list, what carriers can do and change in your phone?

Doorstep2077 4y ago

Doesn't surprise me tbh, although I'm curious if different countries have different policies regarding this. E.G. in privacy-centric countries like Iceland, are there stricter rules / regulations?

MiddleEndian 4y ago

Doesn't surprise me, Android lets carriers and manufacturers install all sorts of garbage you can't remove. It's a pretty terrible operating system. I just disable amber alerts when I get a new phone, never gotten any other type of alert in the US, haven't ever gotten an alert in another country. I also hear that Canada sends out amber alerts with an unblockable "presidential" priority, so if I were ever to move to Canada, I would figure out how to disable that type of alert as well.

doubled112 4y ago
Tornado? Nuclear strike? Missing child? It's all the same level of danger, right?

EastSmith 4y ago

We need Linux phone.

vanillax 4y ago

What if you remove the sim card? What can they do?

wintogreen74 4y ago

what the?

hnarn 4y ago

It’s very difficult for me, in all honesty, to even understand why the act of emergency alerts being re-enabled by a carrier leads to this kind of reaction.