During the last round of hostilities in and around the Gaza Strip escalation, it was almost impossible to evade the familiar buzz of various “red color” applications, warning about emergencies throughout the country. Those popular applications are based on Home Front Command data.
But on Thursday, the IDF HFC announced they are putting an end to those pesky, unofficial applications.
“The Home Front Command is responsible for disseminating warnings about various threats,” the unit said in a statement, adding: “Spreading the warnings is done through a variety of means, in order to reach as wide an exposure as possible in a short time.”
However, the statement continued, “many private entities and entrepreneurs make use of the alerts posted on the command’s site for distribution to various applications,” and “recently, we’ve received complaints from citizens that false and misleading alarms are being circulated which confuse users.”
HFC suggested the mishaps have occurred due to technical malfunctions of the private systems that are not under HFC’s control. Yours truly is no aware of such mishaps, but maybe they happen.
“In light of these reasons and considerations, it was decided by the Home Front Command to prevent access to the warning data on the command’s website.”
Home Front Command – Official App
“One of the means used to disseminate the warning is the Home Front Command website, which allows you to view all alerts in the country in real time and even allows you to define certain areas of interest in which you wish to receive alerts,” HFC advised, suggesting: “We emphasize that the Home Front Command has an official application for providing real-time alerts in a focused and reliable manner, so we recommend using this app as an additional warning.”
Here’s an idea: is HFC trying to reclaim the hits that are rightfully its own? Think about it, if the independent providers channel HFC data to thousands of users, how do the budget gods know that HFC is worth its funding?
I’m just saying.