Apple, Google address privacy concerns with coronavirus tracking tech

As companies and governments around the world, they are fighting Corona virus Pandemic, Apple and Google are making changes to the Contact tracking technology They were developed to inform people when they were exposed to the virus.

The contact tracking technology that the two companies have been working on for just over a month was original designed to help people alert each other If someone they have been in contact with for 14 days has been diagnosed with coronavirus. When the project was first announced, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised that the technology would be this built with privacy in mind.

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Contact tracking explains: How apps can slow down the corona virus

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The technology essentially supports Apple iPhones or devices that run on Google’s Android software communicate with each other. To do this, they send each other signals via Bluetooth that are stored on the phones. When it is confirmed that someone has the corona virus, their phones send a new signal that notifies all the phones they have been in contact with in the past 14 days.

Apple and Google’s efforts are just the latest in the way large technology companies tackle the corona virus that has killed nearly 200,000 people worldwide and infected more than 2.7 million people.

Truly, the life sciences branch of Google’s parent company Alphabet launched a website last month that provides information about virus testing to people in California. On the website, which was developed in collaboration with the White House, people can fill in symptoms and fill out an online screener.

Google announced last month that it has donated more than $ 800 million to help small businesses and crisis workers cope with the coronavirus pandemic. Apple and Google have also started to manufacture and distribute protective equipment for healthcare workers.

With this new corona virus tracing technology, two of Silicon Valley’s biggest competitors are hoping to develop apps that can help us regain a sense of normalcy while waiting for a vaccine or other methods to fight the virus.

New data protection

Apple and Google said the technology will be activated, which means that it is not activated by default. The companies will offer developers programming tools in mid-May that allow health authorities to create apps using this new technology. Then Apple and Google plan to offer software updates for more than 2 billion active devices around the world using their software by the end of the year.

Apple said that includes every phone that can Does iOS 13, the company’s latest software that’s already running on devices the iPhone 6S, which was originally published in 2015.

The companies started discussing the project two weeks ago. share the first planning documents publicly To provide security researchers, partners and critics with an opportunity to review the technology.

For added security, Apple and Google said they would change the contact tracking program to use better encryption and encrypt all identifying information to ensure that people couldn’t be tracked. The companies also protect potentially identifiable information over a person’s phone, e.g. B. the phone model they use or the signal strength of their transmissions.

Apple and Google are looking for health authorities to develop apps, the companies said, but they will also provide support. The companies said it was easy to create an app for this project. And for health officials who don’t want to build their own, they can use a pre-built app that can be renamed.

Call it “exposure notification.”

Companies are also changing the terminology they use and moving away from the widespread term “Contact tracking, “which could increase the fears of people who are concerned about their privacy. Instead, they call this system”Exposure notification“It better describes the functionality of the program, while companies emphasize that the program” protects privacy “.

It is still unclear whether Apple and Google’s software will ultimately win people over. Companies admitted that they don’t know the minimum number of people who choose to make the system effective. Experts believe that at least half of the population would have to choose it, which means that companies could potentially convince billions of people to sign up.

As part of their efforts to seduce people, Apple and Google have promised to dismantle the system when the coronavirus crisis is over. This includes shutting down the application programming interface (API), which was developed for creating apps for the public health sector.

“The promise that Apple and Google will turn off the API is very welcome,” said Jennifer Stisa Granick, ACLU surveillance and cyber security consultant. said earlier this month. “We just want to make sure that this is verifiable and that there will be an independent verification to ensure that the commitments are something that they live up to.”