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Smartphone Virus Tracking–Benedict Evans,

Corrie Foos · Apr 14, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Benedict Evans publishes a free newsletter about technology.  This is from his latest letter No. 331, April  13, 2020

Smartphone virus tracking: Apple and Google announced a joint project to implement low-power Bluetooth-based virus contact-tracing into iOS and Android. The architecture is pretty interesting: Apple & Google add the underlying APIs, and health agencies make apps to use it and persuade us to install those apps. Then, the app on your phone will pass a randomized anonymous key (which will change many times a day) to all other phones running the app within a few yards of you, wherever you are (and vice versa). If, after a few weeks, you test positive, you tell the app (presumably with medical verification), which tells a central cloud service, and every other phone in the region checks the keys they’ve seen in the last 14 days against that service, and if there’s a match they can say ‘you’ve been exposed’. If done right, this is anonymous and automatic. Of course, you need a way to keep out hoaxers, and it would be a lot more useful if you also link to efficient testing. Link

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