The failure of the application "Alert Attack"

In a report of the Senate published on Monday, August 7th, 2017, the mobile application "Alert Attack" launched one year ago by the government makes a poor record object. Explanations.

Available on Android and iOS, "Alert attack" is considered "imperfect" in an information report of senator Jean-Pierre Vogel (LR). Being sensible to warn the population of a current or imminent serious incident and an appropriate course to be adopted, the application has known several failures.

Missed and "residual bugs"

So, during the Nice’s attack on July 14^th, 2016, dysfunctions delayed the alert sending more than two hours. On September 17^th, this one is launched because of a hostage taking in Halles in Paris. Problem: the latter does not exist.

The report notices other qualified "bugs" of "residual":

o     a user received an alert while he was not in a zone of danger;

o    others were able to receive a message of the end of alert one month after the Nice’s attack.

Lack of time and competition of the social networks

In cause: the too much forced "deadline" of the application’s conception. Initially planned for the Europe Football Cup 2016, the "warning device by mobile application" was finally moved forward to a decision of the Prime Minister in reaction to the attacks on November 13^th, 2015. Insufficient for the company in charge of the development, Deveryware, considering the scale and considering the "complexity" of the task.

Besides, the application suffered from the competition of other ways of much more effective alerts and not requiring additional downloads. They are social networks Twitter and Facebook that benefit from the reactivity of their users to spread alerts (even if they can be the vectors of forgery or disinformation). The latter is provided well with its special entitled "safety check" device which allows to indicate the state or prescribe the behavior adapted to the situation.

"Alert attack" and the public disaffection

Add the unavailability of the application to other operating systems that Android and iOS, their ineffectiveness for the simple mobile phones and a lack of information. Result of shopping: " Alert Attack" was downloaded only 900,000 times in the middle of 2017. We are far from "the critical mass allowing to alert all the present population on a site concerned by an alert". According to the report, it would be necessary to reach the figure of 5 million downloads. Only good point: the respect for private life all the more circumstance within the framework of an application launched by the government and thus susceptible to arouse the distrust of the public. In this particular case, the person receiving benefits based on the geo-fencing which forbids any data ascent in the users’ geo-localization to the servers.

SMS CELL BROADCAST: the solution?

If recommendations are put forward to improve the system, undoubtedly another solution has the favors of report:  "SMS CELL BROADCAST". However, it is what had originally been retained: he had to allow "the distribution, in any cases, warning messages, independently of the responsibility supported by the operators’ networks, and offered the possibility of differentiating immediately the classic SMS". It was not accepted for financial reasons and willingness of the operators. Another option was the distribution of geo-location based SMS. Suffering numerous gaps and having been the object of no precedent, public authorities have turned to the mobile application.

However, the report invites to reconsider "Cell Broadcast" in view of the balance sheet of "Alert Attack". It judges the unfounded abandonment when having  allowed, in case of employment, "the fast distribution of an understandable and easy message to identify the set of telephones situated in a given geographical space".

Thus to be continued.

Article written by Thierry Randretsa