Google’s Android-based earthquake detector had a false alarm

Google has disabled its Android earthquake detection feature in Brazil after many smartphone users in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro received false emergency alerts on Friday morning, Android Police reports. The alerts of a nonexistent 5.5 magnitude earthquake were sent to devices around 2AM this morning, and pinpointed earthquakes in the country’s Ubatuba and Baixada Santista regions.

Google launched the earthquake detection network that uses accelerometers in Android devices as a seismometer in California in 2020, and over the years, it has expanded to other countries.

According to CNN Brasil, the Civil Defense of São Paulo, which manages an early warning system for disaster risk, said it “did not issue any alert and that there is no record of any occurrence related to the possible earthquake in the state.”

In an email to The Verge, Google spokesperson Ed Fernandez writes:

The Android Earthquake Alerts System is a supplemental service that uses Android phones to quickly estimate earthquake shaking and provide early warnings to users. It’s not designed to replace any official or other public warning systems. On February 14th, our system detected signals from devices near the coast of São Paulo and triggered an earthquake alert to users in the region. We promptly disabled the alerting system in Brazil and are currently investigating what happened. We apologize to our users for the inconvenience and remain committed to improving our tools.