Hackers Can Turn Everyday Speakers Into Acoustic Cyberweapons (By the way, there is a presidential alert scheduled for today at 2:20 pm ET)The presidential alert is said to be "directed only to consumer cell phones where the subscriber has opted-in to receive test messages". "Beginning at 2:20 p.m. ET, cell towers will broadcast the test for approximately 30 minutes. "
Sure, they probably could turn your phone into a cyber weapon at any time if they want to, but maybe they prefer to test this during an emergency alert test
John McAfee warned about the emergency alert system being a privacy concern, but the EFF disagrees. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/there-are-many-problems-mobile-privacy-presidential-alert-isnt-one-them
Wingless wrote
The ultrasound isn't nominally designed to harm hearing - the point they have for including it is spyware monitoring of "air gapped" devices. They seem to have turned it down a little - I remember ten years ago the ultrasound from my old computer was severe enough I could hear if a game of Dwarf Fortress had paused itself (a stupid thing it loves to do) despite it having sound disabled, the speaker muted, and the display window completely minimized out of sight. Well, either they turned it down or my ability to hear ultrasound is waning, but I still hear it when bringing the computer out of hibernation - it just seems more focused on transmitting some ID code and finishing. I assume it's part of the OS, or at least, I never found a visible sign of it.