Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

Re:Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake by SECProto on Sunday January 12, 2020 @02:34PM (#22028617)

It's strange that this article says "Toronto area" - it was sent to the entire province of Ontario.

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Re:Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake by jpdaigle on Sunday January 12, 2020 @03:30PM (#22029085)

I'm in Gatineau, Québec and we got it too, so it even got broadcast to neighbouring provinces.

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Re:Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake by interestica on Sunday January 12, 2020 @04:12PM (#22029393)

I was wondering about this today. How granular are the 'zones' used for these alerts? Is it just by political boundary? For something like Pickering, it would be useful to have a more geographical zone -- including parts of the US. Could the alert be sent out and limited to cell towers within a selected zone? Is the current system using tower location?

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Re:Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake by Scoundreller on Sunday January 12, 2020 @04:50PM (#22029752)

They have the ability to geotarget them, but fail at it regularly.

From what I understood from spectrum auctions, Gatineau Quebec is a part of the Ottawa area, so they're probably a part of Ontario side when it comes to cell system back-end.

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Re:Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake by stevehiehn on Sunday January 12, 2020 @04:12PM (#22029389)

I posted the news link to HN with this title. I now agree it's not accurate but didn't realize the scale of the alert at the time.

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