Quote:
Originally Posted by 1990C4S
How did the police know your number to text/call?
Cell phone trackers?
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Interesting question. I looked into it a bit. Portland police use a few different ways to notify people of emergencies.
There is a WEA system that sends emergency alert message to all cellphones that happen to be in range of a particular cell tower.
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/wireless-emergency-alerts-wea
There is another CENS system that makes calls to every landline phone (info provided by the carriers). This system supposedly doesn't call cellphones unless the cellphone number has been registered with a publicalert service that the city uses.
See pp 8-9 of
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/index.cfm?&a=352777
The interesting thing is that I don't remember registering my cellphone number with the public alert system, actually I'd never heard of that system before. Okay maybe I provided my cellphone to some city service and it was automatically entered into the CENS system.
My neighbor was in New York yesterday and he got calls and texts on his cellphone there, while my neighbor across the street didn't get messages on his cellphone. So these messages were not through WES.
Still looking for the answer. Anyone know?