4 ms·

Why does who I text have anything to do with who I was close to in person?

• bigiain 6y ago
  Would you be happy if that's your only argument against a prosecutors case against you? How much would you bet against there being someone in jail right now convicted on nothing more than having bought a sim/phone with a recycled number that'd previously been used by someone dealing/buying drugs?
  • satisfaction 6y ago
    No I would not be happy. What I was thinking was: How does who I text help with in person contact tracing. If I text my High School buddy in california how does that help determine who I came in contact with if I were later diagnosed with Covid. I don't get the relationship between numbers in my phone and the probability I stood in line at a starbucks whith someone else who was infected.
    • bigiain 6y ago
      Right. I didn’t think we’d been talking about contact tracing. The linked article was talking about “contact discovery” in the context of contact list scraping by messaging apps (like WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal), not about COVID exposure contact tracing... Now that we are though, if I were a contact tracer, I’d totally ask to see your text messages - there’s a reasonable chance that while not everybody you texted is someone you came into contact with, there’s also probably a fairly high correlation the other way - if you had met up with someone you quite likely messaged or called them to arrange if. If it was my job to help you remember all the people you’d spent time with in the last 2-3 weeks, I’d definitely like to go through your messages and call logs to remind you about anyone you might’ve forgotten.