The contact-tracing app, accuracy?

Installed it as I want to know if I’m at risk of passing it on to my parents.

Be interesting to see how it deals with my Home Delivery job as I spend more than 15 minutes in the van hooked up to the radio, that van is shared with other drivers who do the same and due to the job I spend 10-15 minutes at private homes of shielders, inside sheltered accommodation and the occasional OAP home.

The fact it is so easy to disable the app (not that I have!) by turning the bluetooth off may reduce it’s effectiveness. I can foresee a situation where by folk will think “I have this thing I want to do next week, but want to go to the pub tonight. I’ll be best turning the app off tonight to prevent it telling me to isolate and potentially miss doing that thing I want to do”

I know of people that will 100% do this, they’re the same people who have been giving false details to places they have visited too. Their placing in my internal list of ‘People I Trust’ has dropped considerably.

Interesting quote from Hancock – although people advised by the app to self-isolate because they had been close to a person testing positive should follow that advice, it was not a legal requirement – unlike an instruction from NHS Test and Trace.

I’ve downloaded it. I’ve nothing to hide and my location is already tracked every time I use Google Maps, upload to Strava and use my Morrison’s card! Like others say if it helps even a tiny bit…

In high risk area living just the other side of the Bradford border.

I know of people that will 100% do this,

I know someone who had a ‘**** off I’m exempt’ t shirt printed (she’s not) so she could go shopping/to the pub with no mask because she ‘knows her rights’.

this may be a stupid question, but does the app actually need to be “open” in the background.
I have a habit of closing all the Apps that I have used each time I pocket my phone again (for no real reason, its just a habit)

And I turn it off overnight which also closes all the apps so nothing is open when turned back on in the morning. Just wanted to be sure I wasn’t “using it wrong”

Just tested that on my phone and it does seem to need to be open in the background to work.

it was not a legal requirement – unlike an instruction from NHS Test and Trace

It can’t be a legal requirement… you can’t be legally required to do something by an anonymous targeted notification. Well… I hope that we never go down that route, anyway.

this may be a stupid question, but does the app actually need to be “open” in the background.
I have a habit of closing all the Apps that I have used each time I pocket my phone again (for no real reason, its just a habit)

And I turn it off overnight which also closes all the apps so nothing is open when turned back on in the morning. Just wanted to be sure I wasn’t “using it wrong”

Not sure about the first question – I do that also.

2nd question I read somewhere on the NHS App help website you need to unlock your phone once after you’ve turned it back on.

Edit: Found it

The amount of data we leave on the web is huge, yet people think this app will allow the government to spy even more…

Just because it happens elsewhere doesn’t make the app spying ok. The executive work for us and they should be reminded of this regularly not just at election time.

See also the unwritten constitution that we had that the current executive are ignoring with relative impunity.

The whole point of BLE beacons is to enable location tracking indoors. If your phone sees one of those, then it knows that other devices in range are in the same proximity.

Huh? BLE is (for most practical purposes) one-way communication. A beacon is just that, it’s a transmitter, it has no knowledge of you or anyone else. Have I misunderstood what you’re saying?

This is what Paul was explaining at on the previous page. The app on your phone is effectively broadcasting your (allegedly) anonymous ID to be picked up by any other devices that are listening. In and of itself this is insufficient to ascertain your actual location, you’d have to combine that data with other geolocation information. This is where your beacons come in as they’re at fixed, known locations – so for example you could use them to underpin an interactive store guide app in a shopping centre. But that’s got nowt to do with Track & Trace.

Do all contact tracing apps interact or would you need to change apps if you were travelling?

But that’s got nowt to do with Track & Trace.

I never said it was. But beacons are used to track location and footfall.

I know someone who had a ‘**** off I’m exempt’ t shirt printed (she’s not) so she could go shopping/to the pub with no mask because she ‘knows her rights’.

Louise?

Mandatory in my gym to have the NHS app installed and scan the QR code before every session. This despite already having individual key fobs and a booking system.

Do all contact tracing apps interact or would you need to change apps if you were travelling?

Those that use the apple-google api are capable of interacting, but it needs some agreement in the back end to send alerts correctly. So instead I’ve 5 on my phone now. you can only use one at a time, but the data set is the same, so in theory if I jump from the uk-germany-austria I won’t lose any interaction history, AFAIK.

Downloaded it. Used it to log into a venue for a coffee with a workmate. Easy peasey.

The register has a short article about the app. I found this comment from ‘anonymous coward’ on it useful:

*If* – and that’s a big if – they’re sticking to the described privacy policy documents then the application is about as close as you can feasibly get to truly anonymous. The two key problematic datasets – exposure notifications and venue checkins – both stay on your device. The only potentially identifiable bits of persistent information are your part-postcode and your device and application version information. That would be enough for a really determined attacker to identify you, but they wouldn’t gain much – there’s no logs of activity maintained or anything like that. Just active/stale flags and rolling counts. So they’d be able to tell (after an inordinate amount of work) that you had used the app in the last day and checked into two venues, but not where or when or anything actually useful. That is a Good Thing.

I’m one of those people you’ll have seen posting, at length, in the original article threads (as AC, natch) railing against the enormous volumes of data NHSX were planning to hoover up and the insane privacy agreements they were asking the testers to commit to – handing the data over to Palantir and co for 7+ years. All of that is gone. The NHS have clearly put a huge amount of effort into writing the new privacy policy, the new data journey document and the human-readable versions of the same. They’re now frankly exemplary pieces of work. Assuming those policies are being properly adhered to, the teams responsible for this turnaround do appear to deserve at least a handshake. Well, a sanitised handshake anyway. There is a pandemic on.

Yup… it’s a whole world away from that abandoned abomination… it might even work! Downloading before I next go out… will have the chance to read some tear downs of the app by then as well… but I already have much more confidence in using this one than the shower of shit the other one was turning out to be.

^ same Kelvin

I’ve downloaded it. Hopefully everyone else will to.

Downloaded it. I am doing a lot of volunteering with a high-risk group, though unlikely this group will have a high take-up of the app, but at least if I am alerted that I have been in contact with someone who has tested positive, I will be able to stop my volunteering and reduce the risk to this group.

Mandatory in my gym to have the NHS app installed and scan the QR code before every session. This despite already having individual key fobs and a booking system.

Excellent. I said months ago that there needs to be a personal benefit to using it, such as entry to venues/public transport and so on.

If I don’t intend to go to the pub, restaurant, gym etc. and don’t spend 15 minutes with anyone other than close family (wife and daughter under 16) is there any reason why I should get the app?
I take my daughter to school and back a couple of times a week in the car and that is the big risk for the family but she is out of the scope of the app

Do you shop?

im still wondering about the proximity thing in flats.
if i leave my phone on the floor while it’s charging and downstairs has theirs on a table then how does it know there’s a concrete floor between us?

i went to airdrop a photo to my partners phone in her flat and the downstairs neighbour appeared as a send option (despite having contacts only selected) so bluetooth works through walls/floors. maybe signal strength is used to help tell if there is masonry between you?

it was not a legal requirement – unlike an instruction from NHS Test and Trace

It can’t be a legal requirement… you can’t be legally required to do something by an anonymous targeted notification. Well… I hope that we never go down that route, anyway.

Couple if guys on the radio this morning (tech journalists) were saying that the app can notify you if you need to self isolate but it has no way of identifying you, so there’s no way they can follow up to find out if you do as told.

im still wondering about the proximity thing in flats.

I said the same thing way back about next door neighbours. I’ve potentially been “within two metres” of the bloke next door for days at a time.

Do you shop?

Rarely I do but I am moving around and would estimate in store for less than ten minutes. I was just trying to figure out if this would do anything at all if my wife and I do not get in to another persons company for more than 15 minutes, if that is the ‘risk’ criteria used then I guess not.

Mandatory in my gym to have the NHS app installed and scan the QR code before every session. This despite already having individual key fobs and a booking system.

That seems odd when a large percentage of phones that are in common usage aren’t compatible with the app.

im still wondering about the proximity thing in flats.
if i leave my phone on the floor while it’s charging and downstairs has theirs on a table then how does it know there’s a concrete floor between us

This is a massive problem. My mate who worked on the original app spent a lot of time in NPL’s labs trying to understand how pervasive BLE is and it turns out to be frikking nightmare. It’ll ricochet down supermarket aisles, jump through walls, across streets. He wrote up about his experiences here

Lots of bleating about incompatibility like the thoughtless bastards who designed phones six years ago to be sold five years ago had this in mind. Five Live even gave airtime this morning to an oldie who was all too proud to tell the nation she used a land line and therefore it wasn’t compatible with her way of life. The sea’s over there love.

I’ve downloaded it but can just as easily uninstall it unlike the facial recognition CCTV over there >>> ^^^ <<<< VVVV

If I don’t intend to go to the pub, restaurant, gym etc. and don’t spend 15 minutes with anyone other than close family (wife and daughter under 16) is there any reason why I should get the app?

is there any reason why you shouldn’t?

Odd that people are so hesitant/worried about it, when they already giveaway their digital info all over tha place already! Main point is, it’s for the greater good. It’s not going to be perfect, but if it helps, a bit, it’s worth it surely.

Odd that people are so hesitant/worried about it, when they already giveaway their digital info all over tha place already! Main point is, it’s for the greater good. It’s not going to be perfect, but if it helps, a bit, it’s worth it surely.

this

if I ruled the world, I’d force it onto everyone’s phones (much like apple did with the U2 album)

is there any reason why you shouldn’t?

Exactly – download it and if you are 100% safe from infection then you will simply never get an alert saying you may have been in contact with someone that may have it. In the meantime the Government will get a bit more data to enable them to better understand the travels of the virus and possibly identify spikes more effectively to enable them to react more promptly.

I really don’t see a single grown-up argument against downloading the app.

That seems odd when a large percentage of phones that are in common usage aren’t compatible with the app.

How large a percentage? My Android phone (S7) is on the cusp of that sort of obsolescence. It’s a f******* nightmare to use. The screen is either unreactive or thinks I’m pressing . all the time whilst typing. The battery lasts half a day unless it’s plugged in, it’s constantly telling me to free up space and the camera is slightly foggy.

The average life is 2.88 years according to : https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphone-life/
Which means the average age is probably arround 1.4

Odd that people are so hesitant/worried about it, when they already giveaway their digital info all over tha place already! Main point is, it’s for the greater good. It’s not going to be perfect, but if it helps, a bit, it’s worth it surely.

I gave Tesco £100 for the weekly shop on Friday. Should I give everyone £100? It would have been for the greater good, but I’d have been bankrupt by the time I left the fruit and veg isle.

if I ruled the world, I’d force it onto everyone’s phones (much like apple did with the U2 album)

This new app might not be as bad as a U2 album, or the previous version of the app. If it was forced then I’d put my anger level somewhere around “pissed off ranting on facebook”, which is at least better I suppose than “petrol bombing downing street” if the earlier version had been forced.

I’ve just installed it and it’s saying it’s still on trial and I need a unique code? Wtf?

Have I installed the correct one??

if I ruled the world, I’d force it onto everyone’s phones (much like apple did with the U2 album)

You evil, heartless bastard!

Anyway, downloaded it this morning, just had two Apache gunships do a slow circle over the village.

Makes you think…..

the fruit and veg isle

Oooh! I want to live there.

Cheers Johndoh that makes sense, I was wondering what benefit it would give me and I would give back to the system which you have answered. I imagined I would be adding lots of unnecessary data to the system.

I have a reasonable chance of getting Covid but it will come via my daughter and her school movements which are not covered by this system.