Covid-19 tracking app for phones could save you from virus

Technology and cyber security experts have allayed privacy fears around Android’s cellphone Covid-19 tracker, Exposure Notifications System, jointly created by Google and Apple.

Operating systems like Android and iOS have been updated with technology that can track Covid-19 exposure but for it to work, one needs to download the application and give it operating permissions, like tracking your movements.

Once activated, the application will use Bluetooth to notify you if you have been close to someone infected with Covid-19 and stores the contact details of people with the similar application activated that you come in contact with.

If you test positive for Covid-19, you can notify the application, which will in turn notify people that you have come in contact with.

Google and Apple have explained that once you opt in, the system generates a random ID for your device, with your phone and the phones around you working in the background to exchange these privacy-preserving random IDs via Bluetooth.

The application requires your permission to share information, the same way as you use Uber, for example. You give it permission to use your device’s location.

Professor Basie von Solms, director of the Centre for Cyber Security at the University of Johannesburg, said the system demonstrated reasonably good use of technology. He said several countries, including Australia, Singapore and the UK, have developed and are using the system, and that Google and Apple have developed a similar system for its users.

Von Solms however said the success and effective use of the tool was dependent on its uptake, which should be at least 15% of the country’s population.

“Suppose you go to the mall and you walk past 400 people… and only 10% have the app activated. So, you will not know of the other 90% people that you passed, your phone will not recognise them because their phones do not have the app activated. So, this is critical, the number of people that must have the app is an important criteria for the whole system to work,” he said.

For the system to work, the health department would need to develop an application that can use that function.

The health department spokesperson, Popo Maja, was unable to comment.

In his analysis for Forbes magazine, technology analyst and journalist Davey Winder said, “those looking forward to a good old rant about the state violating their right to privacy or expecting fuel to feed another conspiracy theory fire” would be disappointed.

He said that neither Apple nor Google have uploaded an app on anyone’s phone without their permission, and that “nobody can or will install a Covid-19 tracking app on your phone but you. At that point, you will have to agree to the various permissions the application requires to work effectively”.

– siphom@citizen.co.za

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