Assuming modern life wasn't alarming enough as it is, MI5 has come up with a new way to remind us of the perils that, we are repeatedly told, face us all.
Soon, you will be able to register on the MI5 website to receive email updates when the national terrorism threat level changes.
According to reports, this system could then be expanded to allow text message alerts, too.
The government operates a five-tier warning level for the likelihood of a terrorist attack, ranging from low, meaning an attack is unlikely, to critical, issued when an attack is "expected imminently".
It is currently at severe, having been taken down a notch from critical in mid-August after 24 people were arrested in connection with an alleged terror plot the week before.
The email alerts are not new in the sense that the information is already available to the public. Details of the threat level - assessed by the government's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre - have been posted on the MI5 and Home Office websites since August.
However laudable the intentions in making such information freely available, the new system begs one key question - what are you meant to do with it?
Say, for example, you're pushing a trolley round Tesco and your phone vibrates. A message is waiting: the terror threat is now critical. What's the correct response? Do you scurry round the aisles stocking up on tinned food, batteries and tape to seal up your windows? Do you run to your children's school and drag them out of class?
Or - as people around the world have done when faced with immeasurably more immediate dangers - do you simply carry on with normal life as best you can?
Additionally, given that MI5 told MPs less than 24 hours before the July 7 bombings that there was no imminent threat to the nation, can we even believe the alerts anyway?
