COVID-19 Can Be Serious Enemy: Google And Apple Unite To Detect Virus Carriers With Applications

JAKARTA - A surprising collaboration came from Apple and Google, which have the goal of preventing and breaking the chain of spread of the COVID-19 pandemic by utilizing smartphone technology through an application.

As proclaimed by The Guardian, Saturday, April 11, later this application will use a short-range Bluetooth signal to trace a user's contact or telephone number. The application will of course be available on iPhone and Android devices.

Using Apple-Google technology, the contact tracking application will collect records of other cell phones that are close to the application user. This data can be used to alert other people who may have been infected from a carrier of the virus.

If the person later finds out that they are positive for COVID-19, they can use the same system to alert everyone, from before it became widely contagious.

Although phone owners must install the app first and agree to share data with public health authorities, concerns have been raised about the effectiveness of the technology and privacy concerns surrounding its application.

The two US tech giants have indeed chosen to use Bluetooth to track who has been in contact with a person with COVID-19 rather than location services to protect some user privacy, but some privacy protection activists are still wary.

"No contact tracing application can be completely effective until there is extensive, free and rapid testing and fair access to health services," said ACLU surveillance and cybersecurity adviser Jennifer Granick.

"People will only trust this system if they protect privacy, remain voluntary, and store data on individual devices, not a centralized repository," he added.

Some privacy activists have warned that such apps need to be designed so that governments cannot misuse privacy data to track their citizens. Apple and Google said in the announcement that user privacy and security were included in their draft plans for the future.

The security expert also noted that technology alone cannot effectively track and identify people who may have been infected with COVID-19. Such efforts would require medical tools and teams to accurately track infected people. In South Korea and China, these efforts have included credit card use and public transport usage records.

Given the great need for effective contact tracing, the two alliances will roll out their changes in two phases. First, they will release the software in May for Android and iOS phones.

In the coming months, they will also embed this application directly into the operating system. So new cellphone users from these two companies no longer need to download, because it is available from the factory default application.

The software developers have also developed such applications in other countries, including Singapore and China to try to break the chain of the spread of COVID-19. In Europe, the Czech Republic is rumored to be releasing such an application after Easter.

Likewise, the UK, Germany and Italy are also developing their own COVID-19 tracking tools.