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I'm not from NL, but I am someone that did not install the COVID tracing app that our government provided (for voluntary installation). My reason was that I wa

by avian 5y ago

I'm not from NL, but I am someone that did not install the COVID tracing app that our government provided (for voluntary installation). My reason was that I was not convinced by the PR that it is actually privacy safe. Just repeating "it uses a safe API, trust us/Google/Apple" was not enough for me. The subcontractor that made the app did dump some source code on GitHub saying "see, we have nothing to hide". However it was very obviously not the same code as the app published on the Play store (for start, it had a different version number), it had a cleared out commit log, etc. Questions about that went unanswered as far as I know. I try my best to prevent COVID spread, wear a mask, got vaccinated as soon as possible, etc. I think it's more likely that the thing with the app was just developers not wanting to bother too much with things they were not paid for than anything nefarious going on. However it raised enough red flags for me that I was not comfortable installing the app on my phone.

mandmandam 5y ago
People here are downvoting you, but you were 100% right to doubt: https://www.iccl.ie/news/serious-privacy-and-data-harvesting-concerns-about-technology-underlying-hse-app/ https://www.iccl.ie/news/serious-privacy-and-data-harvesting... An excerpt: > While Android users can, in theory, opt to turn off Google Play Services, users of the Covid-19 contact-tracing app in Ireland cannot turn the surveillance off if they want the contact-tracing app to work. This means the collection and use of this data is unavoidable for people who wish to use the app. > The data shared includes long-term, unchangeable identifiers of the phone users, including their phone’s IP address, WiFi MAC address, International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, SIM serial number, phone number and Gmail address, as well as fine-grained data from other, potentially sensitive apps, such as banking, dating or health apps. This is data which, when considered together, has the potential to draw a very detailed map of our lives and activities. This story was posted to HN last year, and received a tiny fraction of the upvotes of the story promoting the Irish / Google / Apple app's privacy features. Which would explain why you are downvoted, despite having been proven correct well over a year ago.
- kuschku 5y ago
  MicroG implements the same contact tracing functionality. If you install MicroG, you can avoid all the tracking Google Play Services does usually.
  - mandmandam 5y ago
    Interesting, I hadn't heard of that. Still, the point I was making is that Google absolutely lied about what their app was sending; and people who distrust them are more than justified to. The privacy virtues of the Irish app in particular were the subject of much lauding - when it was shortly after :proven: to be bullshit, that story got less than 1% of the traction.
    - kuschku 5y ago
      The contact tracing apps send basically nothing. It's the rest of Android that's the issue. The point is that installing the contact tracing apps doesn't track you any more than before, neither on microg+fdroid than on a google stack.
      - sp332 5y ago
        If someone has stock Android with Google Play Services disabled, the app won't work. The instructions to install the app don't mention installing a replacement, they tell users to enable Google Play Services.
- jesboat 5y ago
  > users can, in theory, opt to turn off Google Play Services, users of the Covid-19 contact-tracing app in Ireland cannot turn the surveillance off if they want the contact-trac ing app to work. This means the collection and use of this data is unavoidable for people who wish to use the app. I would find it quite amusing if someone submitted a gdpr complaint saying that unnecessary data collection is not optional.

by avian 5y ago

mandmandam 5y ago

People here are downvoting you, but you were 100% right to doubt: https://www.iccl.ie/news/serious-privacy-and-data-harvesting-concerns-about-technology-underlying-hse-app/ https://www.iccl.ie/news/serious-privacy-and-data-harvesting... An excerpt: > While Android users can, in theory, opt to turn off Google Play Services, users of the Covid-19 contact-tracing app in Ireland cannot turn the surveillance off if they want the contact-tracing app to work. This means the collection and use of this data is unavoidable for people who wish to use the app. > The data shared includes long-term, unchangeable identifiers of the phone users, including their phone’s IP address, WiFi MAC address, International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, SIM serial number, phone number and Gmail address, as well as fine-grained data from other, potentially sensitive apps, such as banking, dating or health apps. This is data which, when considered together, has the potential to draw a very detailed map of our lives and activities. This story was posted to HN last year, and received a tiny fraction of the upvotes of the story promoting the Irish / Google / Apple app's privacy features. Which would explain why you are downvoted, despite having been proven correct well over a year ago.

kuschku 5y ago
MicroG implements the same contact tracing functionality. If you install MicroG, you can avoid all the tracking Google Play Services does usually.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  Interesting, I hadn't heard of that. Still, the point I was making is that Google absolutely lied about what their app was sending; and people who distrust them are more than justified to. The privacy virtues of the Irish app in particular were the subject of much lauding - when it was shortly after :proven: to be bullshit, that story got less than 1% of the traction.
  - kuschku 5y ago
    The contact tracing apps send basically nothing. It's the rest of Android that's the issue. The point is that installing the contact tracing apps doesn't track you any more than before, neither on microg+fdroid than on a google stack.
    - sp332 5y ago
      If someone has stock Android with Google Play Services disabled, the app won't work. The instructions to install the app don't mention installing a replacement, they tell users to enable Google Play Services.
jesboat 5y ago
> users can, in theory, opt to turn off Google Play Services, users of the Covid-19 contact-tracing app in Ireland cannot turn the surveillance off if they want the contact-trac ing app to work. This means the collection and use of this data is unavoidable for people who wish to use the app. I would find it quite amusing if someone submitted a gdpr complaint saying that unnecessary data collection is not optional.