Summary
- Android disabled earthquake alerts in Brazil after mistakenly sending notifications.
- Civil Defense of São Paulo confirmed no earthquakes took place.
- Google issued an apology and is investigating the malfunction of the system.
Android’s got a built-in feature that crowdsources device sensor data to provide early warning to users about earthquakes. Today, following an apparent malfunction of that system, Google’s disabled it for users in Brazil.
According to CNN Brasil, early this morning, Android users in the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro received notifications about earthquakes in the Ubatuba and Baixada Santista regions around 2 a.m. this morning. The alerts were apparently in error; the Civil Defense of São Paulo noted that it had not issued alerts and had no knowledge of earthquakes taking place this morning.
Google issued an apology for the errant warnings, saying that the system had detected signs of activity off the coast of São Paulo, which caused an alert to be sent to local users. Google didn’t explain how the mishap took place, but it did disable the alert system throughout Brazil pending an investigation.
A false alarm
CNN notes that the earthquake alerts were widely discussed on social media, despite no earthquake actually having taken place.
Google rolled out earthquake alerts across the US last year, after testing the feature in the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. So far as we can tell, the system is still up and running here — Google’s translated statement to CNN only mentions disabling the feature within Brazil. Here’s hoping Google can figure out what went on here; it’s not a good look for potentially life-saving services like this to pump out false information.