I just saw a post with someone questioning the usefulness of an Amber alert 400 km away from where a vehicle was spotted¹ and wondered if the alert itself would indiscriminately be sent to every phone in a target region, and if that would include the phone of the person of interest, which would seem counterproductive at best.
¹ I pointed out that the car might be known to travel to that region, even if it was last seen 400 km away.
Can also confirm a setting to turn it off on iPhone and some dumbphones. Found out after once receiving the same alert 5 times in a row. GrapheneOS can uniquely block presidential alerts though.
I love open source
I had an iPhone flip out at one point and do the full screeching alarm cycle every 15 seconds or so for several minutes until I figured out how to turn it off.
Fun side story: I told my friends about it and how to turn it off, and one of them like berated me for being selfish because I didn’t want my phone screaming at me continuously for an alert I already knew about. That’s how I learned that guy was a shithead.