Terms for use of the service
- Only deaf, hearing-impaired and speech-impaired people can register to use Nød-SMS.
- It is only permitted to send Emergency SMS in an emergency situation where there is a need for urgent help from the emergency services.
- DSB reserves the right to change the terms. In such cases, users will be informed of the changes.
Abuse of the service can in the worst case result in people in real need not getting help. If you send an Emergency SMS without having reason to believe that an emergency situation exists, you may, depending on the circumstances, be punished with fines or imprisonment for up to six months, cf. § 187 of the Criminal Code.
Misuse of the service may result in exclusion from the service for 48 hours before the user is given the opportunity to register again. The offence can be reported to the police. If the user of the service continues the abuse after the quarantine period, that person will be permanently banned.
Requirements for being able to notify via SMS
Emergency SMS only works if you:
- are a registered user of the service
- have a mobile phone with a Norwegian SIM card
- have money left on any cash card
- has coverage in the mobile network
- have not blocked your mobile phone from outgoing messages
- have not put the mobile phone in airplane mode
- do not use icons/'smiley faces' (also called EMOJIS)
If you have twin SIM cards activated in different devices, you may risk that the response messages from the emergency services arrive on a different device than the one you send your message from.
Long SMS takes time to write, and this can cause it to be changed to MMS, which the service does not normally support. Therefore, avoid the SMS message you send being too long. The message is converted to MMS usually between 760-1520 characters, depending on the phone's settings.
If you are not registered as a user of Nød-SMS and send a message to one of the emergency numbers, you will be told that your message will not be received and that you must contact the emergency notification center in another way. However, the service cannot guarantee that you will receive an error message if the message does not reach the emergency notification centers for some other reason.