Will you download the contact tracing app?

1123heavy

I absolutely will not be downloading this app. I'm not involved in any conspiracies as such but common sense needs to be applied.

To the people saying they wont know any of your details, please cop on. You have given your details to android and apple, therefore by you downloading the app onto your phone (via that apple or android account), they will know who you are. They are then able to trace your movements and label those movements to you

Santy2015

800,000 downloads! Massive uptake. Didn’t think it would be that high that quick. 1m by Thursday??

Santy2015

800,000 downloads! Massive uptake. Didn’t think it would be that high that quick. 1m by Thursday??

Beanybabog

How does this work alongside normal contact tracing? Will you still get a call or is the app notification enough? If it’s anonymous, how would a human contact tracer establish you’re actually a close contact (ie could an employee behind a safety screen count?) or do you just accept the notification as the decision that you are.

Capt'n Midnight

1123heavy wrote: »

To the people saying they wont know any of your details, please cop on. You have given your details to android and apple, therefore by you downloading the app onto your phone (via that apple or android account), they will know who you are. They are then able to trace your movements and label those movements to you

You can be bloody sure Google and Apple will take extreme care to only hand over the bare minimum of your their data to anyone else.


Oh and the Israeli's launched another spy satellite yesterday https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/07/06/israel-successfully-places-surveillance-satellite-into-orbit/

GarIT

1123heavy wrote: »

I absolutely will not be downloading this app. I'm not involved in any conspiracies as such but common sense needs to be applied.

To the people saying they wont know any of your details, please cop on. You have given your details to android and apple, therefore by you downloading the app onto your phone (via that apple or android account), they will know who you are. They are then able to trace your movements and label those movements to you

The code is publicly available. You can go through it line by line to see what it does. Many experts have praised it, not one criticism by anyone knowledgable in the feld.


Yes Google or Apple are tracking you, they already are and will continue to do so if you own a phone. This app does not track you and does not give Apple or Google any capbility they do not already have.

murpho999

1123heavy wrote: »

I absolutely will not be downloading this app. I'm not involved in any conspiracies as such but common sense needs to be applied.

To the people saying they wont know any of your details, please cop on. You have given your details to android and apple, therefore by you downloading the app onto your phone (via that apple or android account), they will know who you are. They are then able to trace your movements and label those movements to you

No you've got it all wrong.

Firstly the info stays on the phone.

Secondly, Apple (I can't fully speak for Google) are very big into privacy. Do you remember a few years ago when they refused to hack a terrorist attacker's iPhone for the FBI?
That's how serious they take it.

It has been stated by numerous parties that the information will stay on the phone only and both Apple and Google have worked with the HSE to create anonymous ID codes for the phones.

Thirdly, what are people so afraid of, even if the government did know your movenments, which they won't, but what is it?

murpho999

Beanybabog wrote: »

How does this work alongside normal contact tracing? Will you still get a call or is the app notification enough? If it’s anonymous, how would a human contact tracer establish you’re actually a close contact (ie could an employee behind a safety screen count?) or do you just accept the notification as the decision that you are.

Normal contract tracing will continue, this is an extra tool.

GarIT

Beanybabog wrote: »

How does this work alongside normal contact tracing? Will you still get a call or is the app notification enough? If it’s anonymous, how would a human contact tracer establish you’re actually a close contact (ie could an employee behind a safety screen count?) or do you just accept the notification as the decision that you are.

When you get a notification of close contact a notification also goes to the HSE if you have entered your phone number. That is the first time they will have any knowledge of you.

GarIT

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

You can be bloody sure Google and Apple will take extreme care to only hand over the bare minimum of your their data to anyone else.

The code is all public, no data is collected.


Data is collected in many other places. Google maps for example tracks you every move, but not this app or the underlying technology.

ACitizenErased

1123heavy wrote: »

I absolutely will not be downloading this app. I'm not involved in any conspiracies as such but common sense needs to be applied.

To the people saying they wont know any of your details, please cop on. You have given your details to android and apple, therefore by you downloading the app onto your phone (via that apple or android account), they will know who you are. They are then able to trace your movements and label those movements to you

Do you've any spare tinfoil?

Stark

From what I can tell, if you don't enter any details, you could actually ignore the close contact notification and no-one from the HSE would be any the wiser. Responsibility would be on the person receiving the notification to make themselves known.

1123heavy wrote:

To the people saying they wont know any of your details, please cop on. You have given your details to android and apple, therefore by you downloading the app onto your phone (via that apple or android account), they will know who you are. They are then able to trace your movements and label those movements to you

Google and Apple do that independently of the app.

HSE won't get anything though.

extra gravy

1123heavy wrote: »

They are then able to trace your movements and label those movements to you

Oh no, I went to work and straight back home again today. Absolutely terrified I'll be found out!

GarIT

I'm actually getting worred about all this data collection now. The HSE might inform my doctor I'm not actually as active as I say I am.

HBC08

Sorry if this is a dumb question or has been asked already but do I need Bluetooth on all the time for this to work ?
If i do will it drain the battery or interfere with other things im Bluetooth connected to (like my car etc)
I'm think I'll download it tonight anyway.

GarIT

HBC08 wrote: »

Sorry if this is a dumb question or has been asked already but do I need Bluetooth on all the time for this to work ?
If i do will it drain the battery or interfere with other things im Bluetooth connected to (like my car etc)
I'm think I'll download it tonight anyway.

Yes


No

Hrududu

Sardonicat wrote: »

It doesn't answer them in a way I can understand.

I think it goes like this.

Let’s say John has the app installed. He has his phone in his pocket and he goes out for coffee with Mary. She also has the app installed. John's phone uses Bluetooth to send a message out to any other phones nearby. It transmits a code that would look like a bunch of numbers. This info is passed to Mary's phone (and anyone else nearby) where that number is stored. Mary, as she has the app also sends a number to nearby phones.

These aren’t phone numbers. They are randomly generated numbers. And they continually change. So there is not just one number associated with John, there’s loads. His phone keeps track of all the numbers that have been associated with him, which we’ll call JOHNCODES. It also keeps track of all the numbers he’s received from other phones : OTHERPEOPLECODES

When John gets home in the evening his phone has a list of a bunch of OTHERPEOPLECODES stored. He can’t see them. They’re stored in the background. Each one associated with someone he came in contact with today.

In five days time John gets sick and gets a positive Covid diagnosis. Someone at the HSE asks him if he has the app. He says yes. They say happy days and tell him what to do next. As he has an official diagnosis they give him a code. He can then open the app, and flag himself as Covid positive. To do this he has to enter the HSE code. This is so people can’t randomly mark themselves as positive for lols. Once he does this. NOTE: John doesn’t have to do this. If he tests positive he can choose not to update the app.

Once he does this all of the JOHNCODES are broadcast to everyone that has the app installed. The people don’t see them. This is all happening in the background. Mary has the app installed and it receives all the JOHNCODES. It then compares these to all the OTHERPEOPLECODES that Mary has stored on her phone. As she was in contact with John five days ago one of the codes in here will match with one of the JOHNCODES and she’ll be notified that someone she’s been in contact with in the past 14 days has tested positive. She won’t know who. She won’t know where. She won’t know exactly when. But she can now isolate and arrange to get herself tested.

plodder

1123heavy wrote: »

I absolutely will not be downloading this app. I'm not involved in any conspiracies as such but common sense needs to be applied.

To the people saying they wont know any of your details, please cop on. You have given your details to android and apple, therefore by you downloading the app onto your phone (via that apple or android account), they will know who you are. They are then able to trace your movements and label those movements to you

Apple and Google know that you downloaded the app, but that's as far as it goes. They don't interfere in the internal workings of third party apps. What's quite unusual about this app also, is that not only do they not require these apps to access GPS locations, they don't even allow it, in order to maximise privacy.

Of course, you can choose not to believe what they say, but what I find strange about that attitude is that companies like Apple and Google have ordinary people working for them as software developers. It'd be quite a major conspiracy involving hundreds of these people possibly, for them to develop a technology like this which claims to be privacy conscious, but actually is doing something different.

GarIT

Hrududu wrote: »

I think it goes like this.

Let’s say John has the app installed. He has his phone in his pocket and he goes out for coffee with Mary. She also has the app installed. John's phone uses Bluetooth to send a message out to any other phones nearby. It transmits a code that would look like a bunch of numbers. This info is passed to Mary's phone (and anyone else nearby) where that number is stored. Mary, as she has the app also sends a number to nearby phones. These aren’t phone numbers. They are randomly generated numbers.

John continues with his day, meeting people. If anyone else has the app installed they send Johns phone a number associated with themselves. And John's phone sends a number to theirs.

When John gets home in the evening his phone has a list of a bunch of numbers stored. He can’t see them. They’re stored in the background. Each one associated with someone he came in contact with today.

In five days time John gets sick and gets a positive Covid diagnosis. Someone at the HSE asks him if he has the app. He says yes. They say happy days and tell him what to do next. As he has an official diagnosis they give him a code. He can then open the app, and flag himself as Covid positive. To do this he has to enter the HSE code. This is so people can’t randomly mark themselves as positive for lols. Once he does this all of the numbers his phone has been storing for the past 14 days are uploaded to a central location. Then they are broadcast out to everyone that has the app. NOTE: John doesn’t have to do this. If he tests positive he can choose not to update the app.

Now all the numbers of the phones John has been in contact with have been broadcast to everyone that has the app. The people don’t see them. This is all happening in the background. The app scans through them and compares them to their own numbers. Remember John sent out his number to nearby phones, and received their numbers. So only phones that have been close to Johns will have a match. As Mary was in contact with John she’ll be notified that someone she’s been in contact with in the past 14 days has tested positive. She won’t know who. She won’t know where. She won’t know exactly when. But she can now isolate and arrange to get herself tested.

That's incorrect. See my previous post. When you mark your app as having tested positive, only your anonymous random ID is uploaded.

Good post but what actually happens is the HSE publishes a list of infected devices every two hours. And each individual phone checks if they have seen that infected device before. No lists of who was in contact with who is ever shared with the HSE.

Utopia Parkway

Beanybabog wrote: »

How does this work alongside normal contact tracing? Will you still get a call or is the app notification enough? If it’s anonymous, how would a human contact tracer establish you’re actually a close contact (ie could an employee behind a safety screen count?) or do you just accept the notification as the decision that you are.

The app uses the phone to send out Bluetooth signals, which are acknowledged by other phones (which have the app) and stored for two weeks. If you test positive for Covid-19, you can then kick off a contact tracing process. As part of that process, the contact tracing person you’re dealing with will ask whether you’ll allow your phone’s signal bank to alert others you’ve been in close proximity to. If you agree, you get a code, you enter it and then other phones with the app, which have been in close proximity to you over the last 14 days, will get an alert to say they were in close contact with someone who now has Covid-19

..

plodder

DevilsHaircut wrote: »

I believe that the Irish app is largely based on the Singapore one, which they open-sourced in April.

I'm not sure to what extent that is true. The Irish app was developed using a technology called React Native originally developed by Facebook and which allows you to build apps for iOS and Android from the same source code. From what I can see the Singapore app is completely different, with different versions for iOS and Android like the German app. Maybe, they are using a similar back-end, or possibly some aspects of the high level design are common, but not so much the nuts and bolts of the app itself.

Harpon

Hrududu wrote: »

Now all the numbers of the phones John has been in contact with have been broadcast to everyone that has the app. The people don’t see them. This is all happening in the background. The app scans through them and compares them to their own numbers. Remember John sent out his number to nearby phones, and received their numbers. So only phones that have been close to Johns will have a match. As Mary was in contact with John she’ll be notified that someone she’s been in contact with in the past 14 days has tested positive. She won’t know who. She won’t know where. She won’t know exactly when. But she can now isolate and arrange to get herself tested.

But Mary will almost certainly have got symptoms long before she gets the notification on the app, and will have infected all of her family and close contacts too.

If she has covid19 and has no symptoms, she will also have spread it on to all of her family and close contacts before getting the notification. If she doesn’t think she is the one who infected her family, she may decide not to bother going out of her way to get tested and have someone shove a cotton bud into the back of her skull. So she will continue on as normal and infect many more people.

I really don’t think this app will have much impact at all in the grand scheme of things.

GarIT

Harpon wrote: »

But Mary will almost certainly have got symptoms long before she gets the notification on the app, and will have infected all of her family and close contacts too.

If she has covid19 and has no symptoms, she will also have spread it on to all of her family and close contacts before getting the notification. If she doesn’t think she is the one who infected her family, she may decide not to bother going out of her way to get tested and have someone shove a cotton bud into the back of her skull. So she will continue on as normal and infect many more people.

I really don’t think this app will have much impact at all in the grand scheme of things.

It will have a huge impact if you can tell Mary she has been exposed before she gets a chance to infect her family. Within two hours of John testing positive Mary will know she has been in contact with someone who has tested positive and will be immediately recommend for testing.

If Mary finds out a day early, her relatives will find out about themselves two days early, that might be enough to stop spreading it, and if not the next person in the chain finds out three days early.

Paranoid Bob

Rubberchikken wrote: »

Anything connected with the hse is bound to be a fiasco.

And, no, I won't be downloading it. A waste of time and effort.

What time and effort exactly? It will take you at lot less time and effort to install the app then to read this thread.

Bob Z

how Private or unprivate is it ?

Bob Z

what if your nieghbour has it? would the app think we are in close proximaty ?

listermint

Harpon wrote: »

But Mary will almost certainly have got symptoms long before she gets the notification on the app, and will have infected all of her family and close contacts too.

If she has covid19 and has no symptoms, she will also have spread it on to all of her family and close contacts before getting the notification. If she doesn’t think she is the one who infected her family, she may decide not to bother going out of her way to get tested and have someone shove a cotton bud into the back of her skull. So she will continue on as normal and infect many more people.

I really don’t think this app will have much impact at all in the grand scheme of things.

Il have to delete the app now. Harpon has stated that and app adopted by nearly a million people in 24 hours which sole purpose is to assist in valuable anonymous data gathering for warning and research purposes has no used and will have no impact.


What a waste of time this whole thing was.

Harpon

GarIT wrote: »

It will have a huge impact if you can tell Mary she has been exposed before she gets a chance to infect her family. Within two hours of John testing positive Mary will know she has been in contact with someone who has tested positive and will be immediately recommend for testing.

If Mary finds out a day early, her relatives will find out about themselves two days early, that might be enough to stop spreading it, and if not the next person in the chain finds out three days early.

Yes but by the time John has realised he has symptoms, gotten tested, gotten the results, and then updated the app, the damage will have been done. It’s too slow of a process, you may slightly slow the spread, but not be any significant amount.

listermint

Bob Z wrote: »

how Private or unprivate is it ?

Read the thread. Or read the app. All information is is clearly explained in basic language for you.

Stark

Bob Z wrote: »

how Private or unprivate is it ?

Very private. They've done an impressive job in that regard imo. Still won't be enough to satisfy the tin foil hat wearers mind you.