Smart phone contact tracing apps are a technology whose time never arrived: Months after agency officials said they were actively “assessing the results” of a trial conducted at Oregon State University, state officials now say they have no final documentation about efforts to evaluate the project. The decision by state officials not to formally assess … Continue reading Boondoggle: Oregon’s smart phone contact tracing app failure
In reality, adoption of contract tracing apps by citizens was largely sporadic and unenthusiastic. A trio of researchers in Australia decided to explore why contract tracing apps weren’t more widely adopted. Their results, published on 23 December in IEEE Software, emphasize the importance of social factors such as trust and transparency. Source: Why Aren’t COVID Tracing … Continue reading Smart phone contact tracing apps mostly ignored, unused
As explained in detail several times last year, smart phone-based, Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps were never likely to be useful. Effectively with this announcement today, Oregon has abandoned it’s smart phone contact tracing apps, joining half the US states that chose to not pursue these apps. Oregon pausing exposure notification app This week, OHA decided … Continue reading The end of smart phone based contact tracing apps
One year ago, the tech sector jumped in with a plan to develop smart phone based contact detection apps. These would use Bluetooth to estimate potential contacts with someone later testing positive for Covid-19. I predicted at the time (see past posts) that this technology was not likely to be successful for many reasons. Here … Continue reading One year later: Smart phone, Bluetooth-based contact tracing apps remain AWOL
They were an ill conceived “great idea doomed to success”. Seemed like a great idea but in practice, they are likely not workable. I have posted many items on this topic already. They really do need mass adoption to have a meaningful impact. Even at 50% adoption, they could only detect 25% of potential contacts. … Continue reading As of August 1st, smart phone bluetooth-based contact tracing apps have mostly vanished
The GPS-based contact tracking system was hardly used; the app will continue to have a Bluetooth “close encounter” detector but unless a majority install the app, its mostly useless. “We’ve learned over the course of the past three months that location tracking isn’t popular,” state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn said Thursday. “And as a result, … Continue reading Utah mostly abandons its contact tracing smart phone app
In May, a report said Iceland had achieved the largest penetration of any virus-tracking app, with 38% of its 364,000 inhabitants installing it. But the Iceland app, which collected people’s GPS data, “wasn’t a game changer,” according to Gestur Pálmason, the deputy chief inspector of Iceland’s Covid-19 tracing team. Oxford University researchers have said 60% … Continue reading Smart phone Covid-19 contact tracing apps accomplishing little
The UK has since abandoned its NHSX developed app and is now moving on to a new app based on Google/Apple tech, but is not expected to release the new app until … end of 2020: Developers of several apps were urged to stop work by either NHSX or the Ministry of Defence, who told … Continue reading UK’s NHS tried to stop development of third-party contact tracing smartphone apps
Update: The UK government terminated its contact tracing app trial, on going since the beginning of May and will now develop a new contact tracing app based on the Google/Apple Bluetooth tech. More confusion and incoherent messaging in the public health domain: A Covid-19 tracing software tool has appeared in the settings of both Android … Continue reading UK smart phones display feature update for contract tracing – but its confusing as its not actual contact tracing
An analysis of nearly 500 Covid-related apps worldwide shows major differences in how much data they expect you to give up. Source: The iOS Covid App Ecosystem Has Become a Privacy Minefield | WIRED How many Covid-19 cases have been successfully tracked with smart phone-based exposure notification and contact tracing apps? Past reports say close … Continue reading Privacy: Over half of Covid-19 smart phone tracking apps do track your actual location, and 1/3d even access your photos