Swiss alerts: source, data and safety

1. Where the alerts come from

• All alerts come from Alertswiss, the official alert and information channel of the Federal Office for Civil Protection (FOCP) and the cantons. The authorities write and publish them; Alertswiss makes them available as open data, also listed on the Swiss open government data portal opendata.swiss.
• We use this data under the open data terms that apply to it, and we always name the source. Teknocare GmbH is not an authority, is not part of Alertswiss or the FOCP, and is not endorsed by them.
• Alerts cover for example natural hazards (floods, landslides, storms), forest fire danger and fire bans, drought rules, accidents, smoke or chemical incidents, and closures of roads and areas.

2. How we take the data

• Our server loads the current alerts from the Alertswiss open data feed, in English, German, French and Italian, and refreshes them about every 5 minutes.
• We show the alerts as published: title, description, instructions, affected area, cantons, severity, publisher, time and the authority’s links. We don’t rewrite, summarise or translate them with AI, and we don’t add our own warnings. Texts the authority didn’t write in your language are machine-translated by Alertswiss and marked as such there.
• Test messages from the alert system are filtered out. Links are only shown when they lead to normal web pages (https or http).
• If the feed can’t be reached, we keep showing the last alerts we received for a short time and try again; if we have none, no alerts are shown.

3. How we choose what you see

• The banner at the top of the page appears only for visitors in Switzerland (and Liechtenstein). It shows nationwide alerts, alerts whose area includes your approximate position (“Near you”), and alerts of moderate or higher severity for your canton (“Your canton”). All-clear messages and minor notices are not shown in the banner.
• The Swiss alerts page lists every current alert for anyone, sorted with alerts near you and in your canton first, then by severity. You can choose another canton at any time.
• Colours show the severity given by the authority (extreme, severe, moderate, minor). We never change the severity or the order chosen by the authorities to promote anything, and alerts are never sponsored.
• Alerts are free for everyone, with or without an account, on every plan.

4. Your data

• To pick alerts for you, we use your approximate location (country, canton and position) worked out from your IP address by our hosting provider. It is used only to answer that request and is not stored for alerts. It can be wrong, for example with a VPN, a company network or a mobile connection.
• We don’t ask for your precise location (no GPS) and don’t build a location history.
• Alertswiss receives no data about you: our server loads the alerts, not your browser.
• Alerts you hide are remembered only in your own browser (local storage) and can be cleared in your browser settings.
• More in the privacy policy.

5. How we work to keep people safe

• Severe and extreme alerts, and alerts near you, are shown at the top of every page so they are seen without searching.
• Each alert shows the authorities’ instructions (“What to do”) in full and links to the responsible authority.
• The emergency numbers are always shown with the alerts: 112 (general emergency), 117 (police), 118 (fire), 144 (ambulance); poisoning: 145.
• We check the feed regularly and fix problems with priority. Errors are logged without personal data.
• We point to the official channels that are designed for warnings: sirens, radio, and the alert.swiss app with push alerts.

6. Limits: allqus is not an alerting system

• Alerts can reach allqus late, be incomplete, or be missing if Alertswiss or allqus is unavailable. Alerts are only shown when you open allqus; we don’t send push notifications, SMS or emails about them.
• Which alerts you see depends on your approximate location, which can be wrong. Check the list for your canton yourself if you’re unsure.
• Don’t rely on allqus to be warned. In danger, follow the instructions of the authorities, the police and the emergency services, listen to sirens and radio, and call 112.
• The content of an alert is the responsibility of the authority that published it. To the extent permitted by law, Teknocare GmbH is not liable for damage resulting from alerts that are late, missing, wrong or wrongly located (see the terms of use).

7. Questions and corrections

If an alert is shown wrongly on allqus (for example in the wrong place, or still shown after it ended), please tell us through the support page. Questions about the content of an alert go to the authority named in it.