Across the world, governments and health authorities are working together to get rid of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone is working hard to protect people. Earlier, Apple and Google announced a system for tracking the spread of the new coronavirus. Allowing users to share data through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions and approved apps from health organizations
On Monday, Apple and Google said that they would ban the use of location tracking in apps that use a new contact tracing system the two are building to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Both the companies said that privacy and preventing governments from using the system to compile data on citizens was a primary goal. The tracing system uses Bluetooth to detect keys and will not use the GPS location data.
However, many coronavirus–related app developers defended themselves for using GPS. They said that the use of GPS will help them to locate patients and to track how outbreaks move and identify hotspots.
How Apple and Google’s contact tracing app works?
Apple and Google shared a theoretical example to explain how it works. Let us consider, if two people meet and chat for a few minutes, and in the background, via Bluetooth their smartphones exchange anonymous identifiers to register that they have been in contact. These digital keys change every 15 minutes or so and remain on these people’s devices to preserve privacy.
Several days later, if one of these individuals is diagnosed with COVID-19. The person enters the results into a health-agency app on their phone. The system then asks for this user’s consent. If granted, the person’s smartphone sends a record of the other mobile devices. That has been in close contact during the previous days. Meanwhile, the other person’s phone checks the server periodically to see if any identifier keys have been associated with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. The phone downloads all positive keys and matches it. Anonymously to the key belonging to the individual from the original meeting days earlier. This sends a notification to the other person’s phone with information from health agencies about how to quarantine or self-isolate.