A woman has claimed that she had to disable 'emergency alerts' on her phone after receiving multiple warning messages since the official test of the new government notification system took place on Sunday (April 23).
Kate Higgins told Bristol Live she received the first alarm on her iPhone as expected, albeit three minutes early. She said: "Soon after my phone ran out of charge, I put it on charge and then when it turned back on, the alarm went off again even though it had the first time, and I cleared it.
"So I cleared it and turned my phone on and off four more times, and I kept getting a new emergency alert each time my phone came back on, even though I closed and cleared the alert."
Read More: Bristol man's government alert came through at 4am - 'I thought we were getting invaded'
Ms Higgins said she then asked some of her family to try turning their phones off and on to see what would happen. She said: "Every time a phone was turned off and on again, a new test emergency alert sounded. Between the three of us, we had 12 alerts. We’ve had to turn off the alert settings so that each time our phone turns off and on again, we don’t get an alert, which could be dangerous."
Most UK phones were sent an emergency government alert just before 3pm on Sunday. The alert test was sent out by officials from the Cabinet Office National Situation Centre, which should have been received by every 4G and 5G device in the UK that had not opted out - although some people, many of whom were on Three, said they did not get one.
Liam Moran from Shirehampton, whose mobile provider is O2, told Bristol Live he received the text and siren alert as expected but was awoken in the early hours of Monday morning when his phone began making the 10-second warning sound again.
He said: "I got the alarm at 3 pm like everybody else did, and I thought ok, that's normal. Then I got woke up at 3.49 am with the same noise, so I knew it was the alarm again.
"It kind of freaked me out a bit because I thought, as far as I knew, it was only going to be 3 pm. So I'm thinking we're bloody getting invaded or something.
Bristol Live readers have been sharing their unusual experiences with the alert messages. One commenter wrote: "I got four alerts yesterday, the first at 14:59 and the last at 16:45 my partner got his at 15:10. It felt a bit chaotic all around."
On Facebook, Hannah Godfrey said: "I got an alert at 12.13am this morning! It was my third alert. I’ve now turned them off." Susan King replied: "You must have had one of mine! We got no alerts at all!"
Tom Murphy also had an early morning wake-up call. He said: "Had the second one at 05.25 this morning", while Jane Ogborne noted she also had a follow-up alert, but at the more civilised hour of 10am.
The government has said that while the vast majority of compatible phones received the alert around 3pm [on Sunday], it is aware that "a very small number of devices received more than one alert". An early technical assessment indicates that this is due to some cellular masts "continuing to be broadcast after the end of the test, which could affect users."
A government spokesperson said: "We have effectively completed the test of the UK-wide Emergency Alerts system, the biggest public communications exercise of its kind ever done. We are working with mobile network operators to review the outcome and any lessons learned."
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