Covid Tracing App: First Results

So earlier I wrote about the Covid Tracing App. If you haven’t installed it yet, now is your chance, check it out here. You lose nothing, you gain a lot.

Yesterday I got my first results. 124 codes in my list, none of whom have identified they have tested positive. Yay me! Now, the 124 codes doesn’t mean 124 people, since their codes change over time. It just means that >0 <124 people I was near ran the app, I cannot figure out who they are, I cannot figure out where that was. But, none of them got the test and clicked the button.

In a nutshell, you get a crypto-graphic identifier that rotates, so does everyone else. It never shares that w/ the network: your phone keeps track of the id of those nearby. Daily it checks a list of which ID have self-identified they have tested positive, and notifies you that one or more of your contacts have.

This is the type of data you get, i blurred most of my code, you get the picture.

Now, I am amazed by the number of people who refuse to install it, sight unseen. They assume it uses your GPS and logs you like a character from your favourite show. Well, the code is available, have a look, but, in a nutshell,

It never logs your location, it never logs you to the network until you click the “I tested positive” button. I know a lot of people who refuse to install it just do so on principle not facts. Get the facts. You are not being tracked, its a tool for *you* to track yourself.


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4 Responses to “Covid Tracing App: First Results”

  1. Veroljub

    How did you you find out the number of keys shared?

    1. db

      after the first week it gave me a notification. I clicked that, and it had a details link.
      it showed that each hour it had checked to see if there were matches, and, the number it had checked against.

  2. Phil

    If my code changes over time, then my phone might be registered with different other people using different codes. If I now enter that I am positive, does the app remember all of the codes it has used and notifies that all of them are positive?

    1. db

      i think the random doesn’t change, it but re-signs it. the odds are vanishingly small you get the same code as someone else.

      https://github.com/cds-snc/covid-alert-server
      https://github.com/cds-snc/covid-alert-app

      are the source code. but the code is created by the platform api i think.

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