While the companies thought they where doing something good…
It turns out there where enabling the government AND others to establish a track history of those use their virus proximity app….
The oversight suggests that state officials and Apple, both of which were responsible for vetting the app before it became available April 7, were asleep at the wheel. Americans are especially wary of location and health data, and privacy violations of any degree will hamper efforts to use smartphones both to trace-contact and to provide exposure notifications.
The states turned to North Dakota app maker ProudCrowd to make Care19 for free. ProudCrowd confirmed to me that some data from its iPhone app goes to Foursquare, a prominent location-data provider for marketers — but says it isn’t used for commercial purposes. (The Google Android version of Care19 also uses Foursquare, but does it in a way that obscures the data, ProudCrowd said.) Still, ProudCrowd says it plans to change Care19’s privacy policy and will share less data in the future.
“Should this have been vetted? Yes. We are following up on that as we speak,” said Vern Dosch, the state of North Dakota’s contact-tracing facilitator. “We know that people are very sensitive.” Health officials in South Dakota did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Apple said it was investigating the report and that if it finds an app is out of compliance, it works with the developer to get it into compliance.
Foursquare does “not use the data in any way and it is promptly discarded,” said spokeswoman Jennifer Yu.
Health authorities are moving fast to build coronavirus apps, often with limited technical resources. They’re relying on commercial tracking companies and murky privacy protections — and under those conditions, it’s not clear we should trust them.
The Care19 app is upfront that its main purpose is voluntarily collecting citizen location data. (It’s different from a new set of apps that use Bluetooth technology from Apple and Google to provide anonymous exposure alerts without collecting location data.) Care19 calls itself a “digital diary” to help people remember where they’ve been over the previous 14 days so they can retrace their steps, and the people they’ve been in contact with, should they contract covid-19….
How to Disable COVID-19 Exposure Notifications in iOS 13.5Apple’s Exposure Notification
The feature is privacy focused and shares no personally identifiable information or location data with the public health authorities creating the apps, but some users may want to opt out of the feature, which is enabled by default when upgrading to iOS 13.5.
Apple in the iOS 13.5 update added a toggle to disable COVID-19 Exposure Notifications for those who do not want to participate and do not want to be notified should they come into contact with someone who has COVID-19. Here’s how to get to it…