Set up an IOS 11 Emergency Call When You Don’t Need It
The Emergency SOS in iOS 11 is one of those features you probably never use, but it’s a good idea to go ahead and set it up now in case you need it.
There are two cases when you want to use Emergency SOS: when you are in a real life-threatening emergency and need to call for help as soon as possible, and when you are in a situation (such as a robbery or collision with the police) and want to disable TouchID on your phone.
The idea behind disabling TouchID is so that law enforcement or an attacker won’t be able to force you to unlock your phone. Maybe if you got mugged and a thief took over your phone, you might decide not to store your password, but in a situation where someone like a TSA agent or mall police officer tries to access your phone, disabling TouchID will force them to go through the correct ones. legitimate channels instead of letting them finger unlock your phone against your will.
Emergency SOS is activated by pressing the power button on your device five times in a row.
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The setting may differ slightly depending on how you want to use this feature. You will find the Emergency SOS menu in Settings.
In Emergencies : If the ability to quickly call for help is what you are interested in in Emergency SOS, enable Auto Call in the Emergency SOS menu. This will make your phone automatically dial 911 (or any other correct emergency number where you are) immediately after activating Emergency SOS.
In the Emergency SOS menu, you can also customize your emergency contacts. You fill them out anyway – hospitals can use this information if you have an accident.
When you activate Emergency SOS, your phone will also send these people a message informing them that you have contacted emergency services and where you are at the moment. As a child, my mother was often very ill and often visited the hospital. It would be great to know what she was calling for help and from where, since she could make this call by simply pressing on the side of the phone, instead of unlocking it, start the dialer and enter in numbers.
It can also be nice to know when you’re walking home alone at night and unexpectedly find yourself in a dangerous situation, and you can call for help and let people know where you are without even taking your phone out of your pocket.
If you are clumsy and think you might accidentally trigger the SOS emergency signal, you can also turn on the countdown sound when the SOS emergency signal is activated. This will give you three seconds to cancel the SOS signal before calling emergency services. It will also play a very loud beep. If you get robbed or attacked, that alone may be enough to get your attacker moving on. However, I plan to keep the countdown. If I really need to use it, chances are I want to do something discreetly.
For security reasons : Unfortunately, we live in a time when you might find yourself in a situation where someone in power wants you to hand over your iPhone to verify the information on it.
When you activate Emergency SOS, Touch ID will automatically deactivate and you will need to enter your password to unlock your phone.
Even if you cancel the SOS before it calls law enforcement, TouchID will still be disabled. What’s more, it is impossible to determine that TouchID was deliberately disabled, so whoever tries to access your phone will not know that you have quickly restricted access.
Of course, the chances of this happening, you will need it for any purpose, are slim, but the chances are also high that you will be hit by a bus. Setting up Emergency SOS will only take a few minutes – better safe than sorry.