Apple and Google Launch Digital Contact Tracing System (go.com) 110
Apple and Google announced today that they have rolled out a COVID-19 exposure notification system, "essentially a unified programming interface that will allow public health departments to create their own contact tracing applications," reports ABC News. "Apple and Google are not building contact tracing apps." From the report: "Starting today, our Exposure Notifications technology is available to public health agencies on both iOS and Android," Apple and Google said in a statement. "Today, this technology is in the hands of public health agencies across the world who will take the lead and we will continue to support their efforts."
After an individual downloads and enables a contact tracing application on his phone, he would subsequently receive an alert if he is exposed to anyone who is diagnosed with or likely to have COVID-19. Of course, that assumes that the COVID-19-positive individual also has the application enabled on his phone. The companies said that digital contact tracing is meant to argument traditional human-to-human tracing, not replace it. Digital contact tracing is faster than traditional tracing, requires fewer resources and since it doesn't rely on human memory, can make it easier to track exposure in crowded spaces, or contact with strangers. On the other hand, for such applications to be effective, they require users to download and enable the applications on their phones, and it's not yet clear that Americans will be willing to do so en masse. "Once they download the app, users will have to consent to make their information available to the health authorities and can turn it on and off when they choose to," the report adds. "Data collection will be kept private and only used by health authorities for COVID-19 exposure, not stored in a central database."
The companies said that they will not monetize the data that comes out of the system.
After an individual downloads and enables a contact tracing application on his phone, he would subsequently receive an alert if he is exposed to anyone who is diagnosed with or likely to have COVID-19. Of course, that assumes that the COVID-19-positive individual also has the application enabled on his phone. The companies said that digital contact tracing is meant to argument traditional human-to-human tracing, not replace it. Digital contact tracing is faster than traditional tracing, requires fewer resources and since it doesn't rely on human memory, can make it easier to track exposure in crowded spaces, or contact with strangers. On the other hand, for such applications to be effective, they require users to download and enable the applications on their phones, and it's not yet clear that Americans will be willing to do so en masse. "Once they download the app, users will have to consent to make their information available to the health authorities and can turn it on and off when they choose to," the report adds. "Data collection will be kept private and only used by health authorities for COVID-19 exposure, not stored in a central database."
The companies said that they will not monetize the data that comes out of the system.
Kind of a shame (Score:2)
I almost never carry my phone with me when I go for walks. And if I did, the bluetooth is always off. As is location tracking.
Re:Kind of a shame (Score:5, Informative)
I almost never carry my phone with me when I go for walks. And if I did, the bluetooth is always off. As is location tracking.
Time to change your habits then. Location tracking isn't needed. You can turn bluetooth off as long as you allow this app to use it.
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If you turn the Bluetooth system/radio off, it won't matter if an application has Bluetooth access.
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But are they are really off though? :/
Or, when the coronavirus situation is settled (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple and Google have joined efforts to make it a lot easier for governments and for themselves to track the living daylights out of everybody.
I knew Big Data is working hard to bring about 1984, I didn't think a virus would help them make it happen so fast. Interesting times we live in...
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And no way of turning off OS updates either. Not a problem for Android phones, though, since you can barely update one major version after the one that came with your phone.
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Not a problem for Android phones, though, since you can barely update one major version after the one that came with your phone.
I got more than one on my Sony. It came with 6.0.1 and Oreo (8.0) was the last major release for it.
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My last two Samsung Phones have had 2 major updates as well. However, I think they kind of cheat the system by releasing a phone with an already out of date Android version on it and then updating a few months after release so it's really only 1 major update. Honestly I don't know why I can take an old desktop with intel second generation chip in it from 9 years ago, or my Phenom X4 from 11 years ago and install the latest version of Windows or Linux on it but for phones it's impossible to keep updates goi
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Actually this update is coming via the Play Store so all Android users with compatible handsets will get it.
Any handset less than about 4 years old and with Bluetooth LE should be compatible.
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Most of their phones do have Play, but if yours doesn't then you are in the same boat as Windows Phone owners.
Re:Or, when the coronavirus situation is settled (Score:5, Informative)
If that bothers you, then you probably shouldn't be carrying a cell phone at all, and you definitely shouldn't be carrying one with WIFI enabled, that thing is sending your MAC address out everywhere.
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you definitely shouldn't be carrying one with WIFI enabled, that thing is sending your MAC address out everywhere
Recent Android (and, I presume, iOS) releases do MAC address randomization. Basically they do a keyed hash of the SSID and use the result as the MAC address they send to APs with that SSID. Your actual hardware MAC address is almost never used.
The rest of your comment is accurate, though.
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Apple introduced Wifi MAC randomization in iOS 8 (2014) https://9to5mac.com/2014/09/26... [9to5mac.com] and https://support.apple.com/en-u... [apple.com]
Android introduced it in Android 8 Oreo (2017) https://source.android.com/dev... [android.com]
The protocol doesn't give the government any infor (Score:5, Informative)
The protocol doesn't give the government any tracking information at all. (And this is mathematically provable).
The only data sent to the health department or anyone is if you you test positive, you send in only some random numbers. Not your name or anything, just some numbers your phone previously picked at random. That's all they get. By the definition of random and entropy, there is no information there.
Your phone retrieves the set of random numbers generated by people who later tested positive for covid. It can then do some math to see if you also received some related numbers (basically strong hashes of the numbers) from someone you were close to for a while. If a number randomly generated by a covid-infected person matches a number you received via Bluetooth Low Energy, you were hanging around a person who was infected. Now you, and only you, know that. The health department doesn't know anything.
That's the lay-person's explanation. For any crypto nerds reading, it's IND-CCA, indistinguishable under chosen ciphertext attack. The definition of IND-CCA is that the attacker (the health department) can't a) tell the difference between a number generated by the app and one generated randomly, and b) can't generate numbers which will match anything generated by the app. a) I trivially true because the numbers generated by the app ARE random numbers. B) is true if either sha-256 is collision resistant or HKDF sha-256 is. It's a good bet that sha-256 alone is, and even more more that HKDF sha-256 is.
All of that to say, there is no government tracking - the government receives no interesting information. The system allows you (and only you) to determine if you've been exposed.
A Slashdot analogy :) (Score:3)
Just for fun, here is the system used by the app, using Slashdot posts is the medium of communication:
An AC roles a set of six dice and posts the result here on Slashdot, as an AC.
What can you learn about the AC by reading that post?
Well nothing. You only know that someone posted some numbers. That's the health department's view of the Apple-Google protocol. They get random numbers.
Suppose further that last week called Garbz on the phone and told him "the sum of the numbers is 24. If you multiply all of t
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I said:
"Suppose further that last week called Garbz on the phone and told him "the sum of the numbers is 24. If you multiply all of the numbers together, the last digit of the result is 2".
Obviously it uses much larger numbers than six, and math more complex than sum. It uses numbers hundreds of digits long, and math than can't be "undone" in the way that subtraction undoes addition. "The last digit" part is pretty close though - it's math over a finite field.
Re:The protocol doesn't give the government any in (Score:4, Interesting)
The protocol doesn't give the government any tracking information at all. (And this is mathematically provable).
The protocol itself sounds ok; if that's what really happens, I wouldn't mind installing the app. I believe I understand the risks of false positives/negatives, and, overall, it may be somewhat useful.
However, I have no guarantee that the app you get from the play store really does what the protocol describes, and nothing else. I don't know whether the source code is available for examination, and even if it was, I haven't dabbled much in mobile programming, and don't have enough knowledge of the Android/iOS system and libraries to judge whether the code is clean. There may also be non-obvious bugs (intentional or not) that expose more info than I'm willing to give Apple and Google. And even if I had the knowledge and could validate the code, there is no guarantee the binary in the play store is based exactly on the code I looked at. I'd have to install a trusted tool chain, build the app myself, then jailbreak my phone to load the private build of the app to my phone.
The problem is that (at least for me) trust has been irreparably eroded. I don't believe whatever most companies say - and of the two, Google in particular has repeatedly shown they aren't above bending the truth in their pursuit of the people's private data.
If the app was written and published by somebody like the EFF, who I trust much more than I trust Google, I might reconsider. As it is, I don't think any benefit the tool provides is enough to balance the risk of installing yet another spy tool on my phone.
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The British app is open source so you can build it yourself if you don't trust the Play Store version. I expect many other countries will go the same route.
Having said that the current British app is centralized and doesn't seem to be working very well. I won't install it until they replace it with one that uses this API and I have taken a look at the source code.
Re:The protocol doesn't give the government any in (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I have no guarantee that the app you get from the play store really does what the protocol describes, and nothing else.
Turn your brain on. You have plenty of apps from the play store, and you have no idea what they are doing. Actually, you _know_ that there are plenty of malicious actors.
This app knows nothing that Apple and Google couldn't find out anyway if they wanted. Your _additional_ risk is zero. Even if you love your conspiracies, suspecting this app is just stupid.
Google Maps already knows where you are (Score:5, Informative)
If you run Android, you DO trust Google code, whether you feel like it or not. The operating system of the phone can get your location from the GPS. All of your text messages are sent through the Google messaging app and through the Android OS. It not only CAN read all of your messages, it MUST read all of your messages in order to send them to the carrier.
Same with iPhone - carrying an iPhone is trusting Apple's code. So going off into "do a I trust the people who made my phone" is just a way to confuse yourself. That's not the question here. The question here is what this app sends to the health department. Android has your location whether you install this app or not - and it has your email address and all your passwords to web sites. None of which has anything whatsoever to do with this app.
When we look at the security of this app, we know that Google already had your data before this app was made, so the question is what data does this app send to someone other than Google.
> I'd have to install a trusted tool chain, build the app myself, then jailbreak my phone to load the private build of the app to my phone.
In two different courses in my masters program we had projects that required analyzing mobile apps. You load the app in a copy of Android running on an emulator and the emulator records everything the app does, all system calls, all network connections, any data it tries to send over the network, etc. The freely available tooling for this kind of analysis is easy to use now that almost all of the students are able to successfully trace what an app does. I'll represent to you that it's not that hard and that many people can do it. I think you can find the Georgia Tech "Network Security" course on Udacity for free and you can see for yourself how it works if you want to. The point being, lots of people can do that analysis and I'm sure many people will - some are probably doing it today.
Assuming that analysis shows that what the app does in respect to what it sends to the health department and what it sends via Bluetooth matches the spec, we can easily show that it's privacy-preserving in a very strict sense, in a mathematically perfect sense.
We can show, and I've done the proof in an earlier Slashdot post, that there are exactly two pieces of potentially non-trivial information leaked. The people who are nearby are the ones who can gain this information. Your phone generates a new prf code every 10 minutes, and broadcasts it every minute or so. So people within about 10 feet of you will get this randomish number, which tells them that somebody is nearby, within about 10 feet. That's the first piece of information. It doesn't reveal anything about who is nearby, but it does reveal that someone was nearby.
Secondly, 60 seconds later they get the same number. From that they can know that someone who was standing next to them 60 seconds ago is still standing there now. Of course, since you're within 10 feet they can probably SEE you, so that's not new information. However if the user is blind and deaf they wouldn't see you, so "somebody is still nearby" would be new information if the user is blind and deaf.
The code is re-generated every 10 minutes, so it does NOT reveal that "the same person who was standing next to you in line yesterday is back".
Re: Google Maps already knows where you are (Score:2)
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> However, if my phone's GPS is off, it's off, and there's no way Google maps can tell where I am.
Google Maps actually gets your location based on nearby wifi signals as well as GPS. I just opened settings on my phone and there are at least six wifi APs being picked up, three of which have very unique names. By looking at the relative power levels of the wifi in this house vs the numbers houses, Android knows which house I'm in.
Is GPS off? You asked Android to turn the GPS off and Android says it's off.
Re: Google Maps already knows where you are (Score:2)
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> keep WiFi and Bluetooth off as well. No way that Google maps can use that, the power consumption would show.
I have Bluetooth Low Energy locator tags on my dog, keychain and in my wallet. They run for about a year on a "watch battery". It's called Bluetooth LOW ENERGY for a reason. Specifically they run on a CR1632. A high-quality CR1632 has 130mah and runs the BLE for a year, so it would take 38.46 years to drain my phone battery.
You can look up a WiFi chipset and check its power requirement to do a
Re: Google Maps already knows where you are (Score:2)
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If I were designing a tracker with a power budget, I'd have it check every 5-10 minutes to see "yep, still at home". When they finally get in the car and move I'd have it wake up every 60 seconds, until they've been still for a little while.
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It’s been a long time since I’ve read a comment worthy of the old (pre-2000) Slashdot. Thanks for that, great post.
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Agreed
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Thank you.
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You mean only you and your phone know that, unless you're doing all that math on paper. It's your phone giving you the yes or no and its not a big leap to have your phone notify the government if you may have been exposed. We have to make sure if you've been exposed you're not out there spreading diseases.
Now, when the police gets someone's phone they merely have to "test them positive" and anyon
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Now, when the police gets someone's phone they merely have to "test them positive" and anyone they've been near gets automatically reported in.
Use your brain. If the police "get's you", whatever that means, all they have to do is give you a Covid-19 test, and they know not only that you have been close to someone infected, but that you _are_ infected. If they get your phone, then hopefully you have a passcode set and there's nothing they can do.
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All of above is true of the existing API. It says nothing of the app the government will develop on top of it, and push to phones.
Said app could very trivially tie the random identifiers to other identification on the phone, and they may manndate by regulation & law that you install it and do so, in the name of public health.
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I'm not sure about the Google side, but Apple has been explicit in stating that they will not alllow apps on the App Store that do this. They have to use the API only as intended, and are auditing the code to insure that they're doing so.
And nobody is pushing the apps on the phones. You'll still have to download it and enable it yourself.
Re: The protocol doesn't give the government any i (Score:1)
It depends a lot on the country.
Countries and local authorities are already requiring contact tracing apps on their phones, this is already happening now for several months. There is no logistical difference in making it up to the user when the government can simply require by law that it be installed and registered for you to be out in the community.
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And if pigs had wings they'd be pigeons
Tetris app (Score:2)
Yes a completely different app could do a completely different thing.
After this app, the government could launch an app that plays Tetris. And it has a calculator. Which is completely irrelevant to THIS app.
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The protocol is sound, secure, and useless.
The system relies on folks self-reporting their status. If one tests positive, one can simply refuse to report that fact. Similarly, one can falsely report that they are positive when they are not. So an upcoming art project will be to strap a phone to a cute friendly dog, let it run around the park or beach being a cute friendly dog, and then 10 days later, reporting the dogphoneartist as having tested positive.
Little Johnny will similarly realize he can get hi
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> bluetooth-close to someone who self-reported being infected. Will they self quarantine for 14 days? Wait in line for a test?
You get tested. Which is indeed a 20-minute wait where I live, unless you choose to do the at-home test.
Yes people could probably report false positives, which would cause other people to get tested. That would be horrible, if people got tested for covid.
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Here's an idea, Get Tested! No need to build a mathematically provable secure but useless API to get that message out.
Maybe you could run the testing through the county health services or some other existing government agency with enforcement powers. That way, when folks test positive, the local health service could question them about who they've been in contact with and then follow up with those folks in an appropriate manner. You could call it Contact Tracing. You could even hire recently unemployed
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> when folks test positive, the local health service could question them about who they've been in contact with and then follow up with those folks in an appropriate manner.
The health department does need to keep doing that where they can and it's appropriate.
I bet you can name everyone you've been within ten feet of in the last two weeks. If you've never left your house. I've left my house many times, so I couldn't name more 10% of them.
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Thanks for the links. I did read them.
The first paper is interesting. I'm not too concerned about what they pointed out, which is mostly that someone could falsely report themselves as infected. That would cause people to get tested.
Quoting Schneier in the link you gave to his site, "It's nice seeing the privacy protections; they're well thought out. ... the real problems aren't around privacy and security."
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Oh look, it's you again! Still failing to understand that the Swedish death rate is well above the Danish death rate, the Norwegian death rate, the Finnish death rate, the German death rate, the New Zealand death rate, etc etc. You shot your little toy arrow and drew a target around it with very very white chalk, and thought no-one noticed. And yet you're banging on about the value of a "high-quality" culture! Hint: stupidity and bigotry are not the dominant components of a high quality culture, even if t
Mass (Score:2)
argument traditional human-to-human (Score:2)
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"The companies said that digital contact tracing is meant to argument traditional human-to-human tracing, not replace it."
In case people missed what you were referring to.
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That's why we had to develop preemptive multitasking and put a stop to all the fighting over system resources.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Really, I can't imagine this 'technology' not getting abused in the long run, which is why I can't advocate for it or participate in it. Just as well I don't have a smartphone to begin with.
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Way ahead of you, buddy. No computer, no tablet, no smartphone, no 4G, LTE, GSM, HDD, PCI, ISA, MHZ or any internet of any kind.
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He didn't forget, but couldn't post it - he has no internet, didn't you read?
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o They're expensive
o They're inherently insecure and can't be secured properly at all against outside intrusion (i.e. malware, data breach, etc)
o Proven to be vulnerable to any number of exploits that can turn it into a tracking/surveillance device
o Wireless companies price-gouge for underperforming dataplans
Then there's the plain an
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It doesn't need to work perfectly, it doesn't even need to work really well, it just needs to lower the probability of infection.
If it gives too many false negatives then it won't do that. So it has to work reasonably well.
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There will always be false positives because a BLE signal will travel farther than the virus can. If you and an infected person were on opposite sides of a wall, for example. You will pick up the BLE signal, but the virus will stay on that side of the wall.
And there will always be false negatives because you could've come into contact with someone who doesn't have this on their phone, or someone coughed all over a handrail you're leaning on a little while ago.
No one is claiming a perfect system - it's "good
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Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. This system isn't designed to be perfect, it's designed to reduce the R value to a manageable level where we can lift lockdown and get back to some kind of normality.
The proximity detection via Bluetooth is good enough. It doesn't use GPS or record location data at all.
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Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. This system isn't designed to be perfect, it's designed to reduce the R value to a manageable level where we can lift lockdown and get back to some kind of normality.
The proximity detection via Bluetooth is good enough. It doesn't use GPS or record location data at all.
Watching the arguments about contract tracing app would be hilarious if it wasn't accompanied by thousands of deaths.
People against it made the same fallacy as people against wearing masks, basically - "It is not perfect!"
SK and Taiwan both successfully contained the virus using cellphone location for contact tracing. Anyone think that correlating contacts using cellphone location based on cellphone towers or GPS would be any more accurate than an app using Bluetooth?
Yet it IS already good enough. Same wi
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Well done. You've worked out that there are false positives and negatives. So what? Are you trying to imply that the existence of false results means, in principle, that the app (and presumably all other forms of contact tracing) can't work? That would be at odds with the clear evidence that contact tracing has been successful in the past, in many different contexts. Are you saying that you know the false results rates will be too high for the app to be useful? If so, how do you know? And what are yo
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Traditional, non-anonymous contact tracing by local government bodies with enforcement powers will continue to be critical. This API will be next to useless.
Contact Tracing in the Real World [lightbluetouchpaper.org]
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Traditional, non-anonymous contact tracing in the real-world is subject to all the same attacks and challenges you laid out in your earlier post, and on top of that, it's extremely challenging to run at scale. That's why these approaches are complementary.
While I think Ross Anderson is a pretty good security researcher, it's really a bit much for him to publish a blog on contact tracing in the real world, as though contact tracing were a subject in which he has any kind of expertise; he really doesn't.
Right (Score:2)
>"Data collection will be kept private and only used by health authorities for COVID-19 exposure, not stored in a central database."
Right. It is only for our own good. Just make sure to take your phone everywhere, turn on location services, keep data on, keep bluetooth or whatever it uses on and advertising itself all the time, give the app all the permissions it wants, charge that battery all the time to keep it going, consent to whatever agreements... and have faith that it was designed as claimed a
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Millions of people all around the world have Facebook accounts. Most of them aren't worried about anyone building profiles on them. They either don't know and/or don't care.
What's annoying with this whole tracking idea, even if you put aside the profile building by governments, is that I'm not sure if different apps will still somehow work between them. I.E. someone in the USA installs the USA app, comes to Canada. Will the USA app talk with the Canadian app?
Why aren't Apple and Google building the app them
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Why aren't Apple and Google building the app themselves instead?
Probably because people keep complaining about privacy issues. The protocol is public, you can build your own app if you want to [apple.com], it would probably take a couple days.
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Because a fundamental part of how the app works is that a public authority has the responsibility and accountability for:
1. Sending out the tokens for people who report positive and
2. Setting thresholds (what exposure level counts as a contact) and guidance (the advice to citizens on what to do after a contact with a positive token)
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Right. It is only for our own good. Just make sure to take your phone everywhere, turn on location services, keep data on, keep bluetooth or whatever it uses on and advertising itself all the time, give the app all the permissions it wants, charge that battery all the time to keep it going, consent to whatever agreements... and have faith that it was designed as claimed and secure.
Oh for heaven's sake...
Take your phone everywhere - of course, how else can it know that _you_ are near someone infected and not just your phone? As Homer Simpson said, dooh!
Turn on location services: Apple doesn't allow any app using the API to turn on location services. I don't know about Google, but they probably don't either.
Keep data on: Once a day your phone downloads codes from infected numbers. You want to be told, right? And you need to have data on when you tell the world that you have bee
Just release the frigging app (Score:4, Insightful)
"Government agencies" part will spook people off and doesn't add any value. I would rather leave my data with the phone software vendor that already has my location history from Maps and what not anyway. What companies should do is gamify the experience so people use the app for entertainment but still help reduce illness. Like establishing new social connections with appropriate safeguards, getting fun facts about places you visited, rewards for completing an easter egg hunt...
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Lose points when other players come too close to you...
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Lose points when you willingly submit to forfeit basic civil liberties. This is madness.
Not going to stop with Covid (Score:1)
Once this new toy is tweaked and ready for prime time,
imagine all the things it will tell you and those watching said data.
Imagine alerts that give you ( or those monitoring said data ) a proximity
warning when you're too close to just about anything they want to keep track of.
This list can be as exhaustive as your imagination allows.
Right now it's a voluntary installation, but I have my doubts it will stay that way
for long. The potential of this is just too juicy for the folks who really want this
data to p
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there is no data to track, or rather, your phone will be the only device that has the ability to track data...
it generates and transmits random numbers (just that, random numbers, nothing else), and looks for other random numbers that were transmitted.
if you get infected, those random numbers get uploaded to some location, and then other phones can check if they've seen any of the uploaded numbers.
if a match is found, the owner of that device get's a notification to go get tested (or self quarantine, or wha
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Folks won't bother paying any attention to alerts they receive. And just what are they being alerted to? There aren't enough "monitors" around to keep track of any time a pedophile walks past a schoolyard.
A decade from now, I suspect COVID will turn out to have been as ubiquitous as chickenpox was 60 years ago. I only care whether my encounter was with someone who is in an infectious phase. And precisely when is that? We don't know yet. And even if I am, why would I necessarily reveal it. We don't need tec
Argument? (Score:2)
The companies said that digital contact tracing is meant to argument traditional human-to-human tracing, not replace it.
Angry man: WHADDAYOU WANT?
Man: Well, Well, I was told that...
Angry man: DON'T GIVE ME THAT, YOU SNOTTY-FACED HEAP OF PARROT DROPPINGS!
Man: What?
A: SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE MAKES ME PUKE! YOU VACUOUS TOFFEE-NOSED MALODOROUS PERVERT!!!
M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!
A: OH! Oh! I'm sorry! This is abuse!
M: Oh! Oh I see!
A: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.
M: Oh...Sorry...
A: Not at all!
So I got my answers (Score:2)
1. How far back will OS support be? Will it require the 'latest OS' only?
Since this requires a OS point release to add the support for this, the answer is basically 'yes', unless Apple & Android decide to "backport" this to earlier versions (seems unlikely, and haven't commited to that yet, since that would essentially force Apple to backport security fixes too).
2. How far back will hardware support be? Only 'the latest and greatest'? Current +1 year? Current +2 years?
The basic (hardware) support is based on BT beacons, so hardware-wise it probably support most devices of the last few years. But, again, this needs a n
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I doubt Apple and Google want to get too involved with the BT part, it won't work worth shit so that's way too much liability.
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Re: So I got my answers (Score:2)
Since this requires a OS point release to add the support for this, the answer is basically 'yes', unless Apple & Android decide to "backport" this to earlier versions (seems unlikely, and haven't commited to that yet, since that would essentially force Apple to backport security fixes too).
Um, stick to what you know.
The current version of iOS (in beta) is 13.5.
Apple just released a Security Update for iOS 9 in July 2019 (iOS 9.3.6).
That covers back to my iPad 2 (released in 2011), which I still use, and my iPhone 4s (released in 2013), sitting in quiet repose in a drawer, working but unused.
So yeah, when necessary, Apple most certainly can and will issue updates for OS versions that are, by most peopleâ(TM)s standards, ancient history.
Complete waste of time (Score:1)
The likelihood that someone on a low wage job with no sick pay will act on a notification from this is essentially zero.
Why is someone who worries about whether they can pay rent or afford to eat going to voluntarily put themselves out of a job for at least two weeks?
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The likelihood that someone on a low wage job with no sick pay will act on a notification from this is essentially zero.
That's a shame, but the likelihood that someone on a higher wage will act on a notification when someone on a low wage job is infected and they came near to them is high. So even in that case it helps.
They will not monetize the data that comes out (Score:2)
HAHAHAHA.
"The companies said that they will not monetize the data that comes out of the system."
So. Data comes out of the system ??
And somebody else will monetize it ????
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HAHAHAHA. "The companies said that they will not monetize the data that comes out of the system."
Typical slashdot stupid. Someone asked them "will you make any money out of this", and they answered "no". This turns into a huge statement on Slashdot. This turns into idiotic claims that obviously someone else must monetize it.
Fact is that Apple and Google pay for the infrastructure (which isn't much because they are not collecting much data), that they will only accept apps from national health institutions, that they will not accept any paid apps or apps requiring in-app payments. The other fact is
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"The other fact is that the only information available is a list of random numbers that gets sent to the apps"
How do you know that? The libraries that provide the API are closed source. They could be sending anything to the servers. It isn't the apps, it is the API that transmits the information. Talk about stupid.
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How do you know that? The libraries that provide the API are closed source. They could be sending anything to the servers. It isn't the apps, it is the API that transmits the information. Talk about stupid.
Apple and Google could send _anything_ _anywhere_ without you ever noticing. So this app isn't going to transmit anything. Talk about double stupid, paranoid idiot.
Not too timely (Score:2, Interesting)
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Great! So, after more than two months that the epidemic broke out massively in the Western world, they release the basic API and government agencies can *start* building their apps. We are perfectly on pace to have the app ready when everyone is dead.
You think the pandemic is over, or would be over soon? The virus will still be spreading around 6 months from now, and very likely still even after 1 year.
The US, Brazil, India are already easing the lockdown even before the virus was contained, in 2 weeks you will see a surge of new cases in these countries. It isn't even news now for the total number of cases to reach the next million, it would be 10 million cases before it become newsworthy again, then 50 million, then 100 million.
With people fighting
Survey first (Score:2)
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Android needs something version 8, and the cheapest new phone that I could find ran version 9 for 80 pound.
And fuck your ageism.
Leaving Phone at Home, Sutting it Off (Score:2)
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A good reason to use airplane mode, or leave the phone in the car.
Make app deliver discounts to partiers (Score:2)
An app could include a way to give you points that other services like amazon, point of purchase payment, or screen displayed QR codes for discounts in bars, cinemas, liquor stores, etc. Then money could be dropped on a point distributor in an attempt to get this app into the hands of people who are most likely to get infected and have a phone: 20s and 30s, according to one chart I saw. I really do not want to see us base our hopes on Facebook making a covid app (can you imagine "I got infected!" posted to
...But Why? (Score:2)
So, let's assume that this app is 100% bug-free, 100% secure, 100% anonymous, and both Apple and Google are 100% telling the truth that they won't leverage the data. We'll also trust the government app writers to be 100% competent, and stay true to their word on only using this for Covid tracking. Best possible case scenario.
What's the point? It's been two months since the lockdown started in my state. I've been to grocery stores and pharmacies and had plenty of other points of contact with people. Less tha
Give user data to control exposure to incentivize (Score:2)
If they want to get people to use this, provide information to them to help them control their exposure.
Close contact is supposed to be proximity to someone for 10-15 minutes. Have the app alarm audibly once I have been in proximity with anyone else using the app for more than 8 minutes. Let me whitelist my family members so I'm not getting constant alarms.
That lets *me* impact *my* exposure risk while still going out in public and even having brief encounters with people. If I linger at the farmers' mar
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Why are libturds so afraid and so jealous of true and unbiased opinion? Does not fit their latent narratives full of hate and misery. Feel too good and comfortable - here, have stupid shitty obnoxious migrants spoil your bliss
Is Donald Trump a libturd? I mean you describe him to a T.
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