Anyone not...

So if it doesn't work then downloading it isn't a problem. Your only issue then with downloading it is that it might, with some clever hacking, and back-tracing, result in someone knowing where you went for 2 weeks. Which is immaterial as you don't intend to leave your home until a vaccine is in place.

So I assume your advice to others would be if you do intend leaving the house once lockdown is complete then download the app. It might not work but the slight risk of someone finding out your whereabouts over a week period is worth it to beat COVID_19?

 

My opinion has now changed as more information has been revealed to me about this app. I do not know if the app was changed, or I received some bad information, but I apologise to all.
My new post is here

TLDR: I will be downloading the app if I go out.

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The only benefit to downloading the app will be that they will likely limit tests to those who have the app downloaded.

If my understanding is correct, the app will not alert you to stay at home, as you've been in contact with someone, unless you tell the app you have symptoms, in which case you should be staying at home anyway. The fact that it uses location services rather than BLE means it will be inaccurate. Have you ever used Google Maps? That huge blue circle that appears, that's where the phone thinks you are. anywhere in that circle. I've seen those circles the size of Barnsley if signal gets 'iffy'. The app cannot know where you are exactly if the phone doesnt.

The fact that you have to have the app open is a whole other issue and just defeats the point entirely. It's just beyond stupidity. the hubris of the government and Cummings is going to cost lives again in the name of profit for his mates.

The privacy issues are one thing, but it's just so stupid and unnecessary, that I can't in good conscience recommend anyone download it.

 

But none of this response is perfect. The response was cocked up from the start. But we are where we are. And marginal gains of imperfect face marks, contact tracing, testing, hand washing, social distancing, periodic lockdown, can all have a cumulative impact in helping to reduce the Reproduction rate.

You are probably like me and in a position where you are likely to be able to work from home for the foreseeable future and still have a job. But there are vast swaithes of people who will soon find themselves not in that position as furlough payments end, reduce, or become untenable. Businesses start to fail en masse. And the only route out ofthat is using any means possible to get the Reproduction rate under 1 to allow the easing of lockdown. It might be the wrong choice of app and imperfect but it's currently the only game in town so I'll follow the epidemiologists advice and download it and hope.

I go back to my original point, am I giving anything away, in a hacking scenario, other than my geographical movements in a short period before I become symptomatic?

 

I'm not going to talk about this particular app as I don't know nearly enough about it.

I work in product management in what is now, essentially, a software company. We start by collecting user stories:

As a...
I want...
So that...

In this case the initial user story would be:

As a nation
We want to reduce the R rate of the coronavirus below 1
So that we can limit infections, limit fatalities and all return to normal life

It's a pretty profound user story as they go and obviously significantly more important, more complex and wider reaching than I'm used to dealing with, but the process is the same. (Having said that, our clients are all responsible for very vulnerable sections of our society. Safeguarding is intrinsic to everything we do. What we do and the decisions we make affects lives).

The initial stage is to assess the validity of the user story. That's pretty easy in this case. Then the practicality/feasibility of addressing it. Put simply, if we don't we're all fk*ced. And then research. You start with discovering how the virus spreads and then find ways of limiting that spread. Some measures are easy: wash your hands, don't touch your face. Others are ostensibly easy, but actually difficult/impractical in certain situations: social distancing, self-isolation. Others still are easy but cause other problems: lock-down. Some are controversial and require continued research: wearing face masks And then there are those that aren't easy, they require investment, time, resources: testing, tracking those infected, tracing their contacts and asking all to quarantine. Each and every one reduces R. We are able to get R below 1 by social distancing, closing businesses and lock-down, but the implications of continuing these measures are profound: The economy will collapse, life will no longer be anything like the life we've all previously enjoyed. But if we lift those restrictions then R will once again become greater than 1.

So you get a second user story:

As a nation
We want to keep the R rate of the coronavirus below 1
So that we can limit infections and limit fatalities after returning to normal life

The process starts again. Researching the initial user story has already provided one solution to this, all evidence suggests that to keep R below 1 we need to track and trace, which get its own user story, while research continues to find other methods.

As a nation
We want to track and trace the coronavirus
So that we can limit infections and limit fatalities after returning to normal life

The process starts again... research

As a nation
We want to develop an app
So that we can track and trace the coronavirus and keep the R rate below 1

The process starts again. And what you get out at the end is exactly what you needed. You've spoken to everyone along the way, from experts to developers to end users. You've researched and planned meticulously, joined the dots and found a practical and useful solution to the problem.

The above method isn't the only method, but it is done by every successful business on the planet. IT companies that ultimately fail continue to be led by their IT department. And the process goes like this: We need an app. It needs to have this feature and this feature and this feature and this feature. Let's start developing it because the quicker we can get it out there, the quicker we'll solve the problem and the more money we'll make. And it's not just that the finished product is totally useless and cost a fortune in development, it can actually fk*c things up.

Is that the case with this app? I honestly don't know.

I totally get where you're coming from. I agree an app that works well is invaluable in this. But an app that doesn't work well really isn't. Downloading something that doesn't work, just because it is the only option out there, isn't a good idea. Similarly, injecting a vaccine that hasn't been adequately tested isn't a good idea either. Yes, we need a vaccine. No, I'm not going to inject detergent into my veins, even when that idea has come from the President of the USA. But it's the only thing we have! Yeah, well go fc*k yourself. (I realise that's extreme, and I'm being a bit moronic, but it's the same logic.)

Let me make it clear, I'm not claiming this app doesn't work. I'm claiming the argument that we should all download something because it is the only alternative is fundamentally flawed. We should all download something if it is beneficial. Not that the user story is beneficial, but that the solution is.

All I know at the moment is that this isn't what the best article I've read in 10 years said it was going to be, and my question is why isn't it?

 

I really wish you were in charge of explaining COVID_19 to the nation.

I think this is the classical example of a BBS thread where people start arguing about one thing, it changes in to another, people become entrenched (including me) and then everyone becomes a world expert on something they hadn't heard about 10 minutes earlier.

I started replying to the numerous posts from really good people who said they wouldn't download the app for privacy reasons. I personally think that's a mistake. The data provided, the risk, what it can be used for, pales in to insignificance given the role it *should* be able to play in the response to COVID_19. Could our useless government have gone another way? Probably, but the perceived privacy issues should not stop people downloading it. We live in unprecedented times. Again, to labor the point we've given up all our civil liberties largely without question for the last 7 weeks based on what the government have asked us to do.

Whether the app works or not is beyond me. Lots of the strongest government critics and media have certainly questioned whether its the best app but not necessarily that it fundamentally won't work. In fact one of the biggest criticisms in this thread was quickly edited and rolled back on.

I agree, i certainly wouldn't use a vaccine that hadn't been fully tested or we knew it wasn't effective - although remaining mindful of basing that decision on the overwhelming evidence of the science community not say a small number of anti-vaxxers.

But downloading an app? The level at which I need to be comfortable it's going to work for its purpose is far lower. I download all kinds of crap on to my phone on the blind faith that it's on Google play store and therefore should be OK and/or works. In fact I've still got an Alan Partridge sound board app on my phone that definitely doesn't work.

What I do know is that the app only works if lots of people download it.

By failing to convince people that it is safe and works the ineptitude of the government will again be exposed. But it *does* need to work. The alternative is terrifying.

 

It's simple for me. The app may not work at all, in which case nothing will change and things will stay as devastatingly bad as they currently are. Alternatively, the app may actually perform with some varying degree of success, in which case things may improve, however slightly. Downloading and using the app can't make things worse, it can only be neutral or make things better. Why not just have an open mind and give it a shot? After all, we don't have many other options available.

 

Agreed, if the app has the potential to improve things even by 0.000001% surely it's better to download it than doing nothing.

 

I'll download the app if they send me copies of the Russia and Op Cygnus reports. I don't trust Boris and his mates with my data. The only way out of this crisis is testing. They've failed miserably from the very start. My doctors are 99.9% sure I've had it, took 7 weeks of treatment and I'm now taking asthma medication daily. My cardiovascular fitness isn't there anymore and a walk in Elsecar woods nearly killed me. The government's (Tory Party) lack of action on the whole issue caused this, so why would I trust them.
Nailed on most in cabinet and their mates will be doing quite nicely financially during and after this crisis.

 

Agree. I don’t care who knows where I am. As above most of population can be located anyway with social media, or phone mast triangulation. Don’t think this app would identify me in a bedroom I’m not supposed to be in - or would it ?

 

My opinion has now changed as more information has been revealed to me about this app. I do not know if the app was changed, or I received some bad information, but I apologise to all.
My new post is here

TLDR: I will be downloading the app if I go out.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

A phone GPS has a tolerance radius of about 5 metres, in perfect conditions.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that with a tolerance of 5m it will not be able to check if you’re within 2m of someone else. Again, that’s in PERFECT conditions, out in the middle of a field.

It’s got 0 chance inside a busy supermarket.

The false positives will do more harm than good, in my opinion.

Load up google maps on your phone and look at the blue circle. It’s probably about the size of your house? Your phone knows you’re somewhere in that circle, nothing more.

It will give false positives if a neighbour is tested positive, if someone walking past your house is. It’s ridiculous. Again, imagine that in a busy supermarket.

 

I don’t really see how you staying at home the past few weeks is in anyway relevant? The whole point of the app is to help ease lockdown restrictions, unless you’re saying you’ll continue to stay at home until we have a vaccine or anti viral drugs are available?

No one knows for sure how well it will it won’t work at the moment as there are contrasting views. However, if it could help ease pressure on the NHS and save lives (either your own or someone else’s), surely sending location data to the government pales into comparative insignificance. The very dangerous territory you mention is the COVID infected world we currently live in, not some perceived minor privacy issue.

I respect your decision not to download the app. However, I’m not going to stop banging on about this because if no one challenges these viewpoints I’m concerned that not enough people won’t download the app for it to be effective, and more people will die.
I very much hope people don’t decide not to download the app on a point of principle, or just because they hate the government.

 

I really don't want to argue about it, but anyway......

Isn't it using Bluetooth (BLE) to detect other phones within (about) 2m, not GPS. Using GPS would be doomed to failure for the reasons you rightly point out. The whole point of the app is to use Bluetooth to detect nearby phones, that's my understanding.

 

Because there aren't just two outcomes. It's not a case of things may not work or they may make things better. Things can have an adverse effect.

I am not not talking about this app here as I haven't researched it, but the general principle.

 

The concern would be that you get people feeling ‘safe’ because they have downloaded an app that is basically not fit for purpose and thus increasing not decreasing both the R number and the pressure on the NHS.

I can’t pretend I know much about it but have read plenty from people who do who are highly critical of the app.

 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/05/uk_coronavirus_app/

 

From what I understand (I admit I could be wrong, but I've done as much research as I can find) the App that was proposed by Apple and Google used BLE, the government rejected that one in favour of one that uses GPS, because they wanted the location data, not just who had seen who.

That's my entire problem with it and why I'm so against it.

I really hope I am wrong and it uses BLE or at least a combination of the two, but I don't believe it is. I know at least 2 years ago when I was looking into this for some other project, iOS devices cannot from the SDK both host a BLE and scan simultaneously.
This is why the help from Google and Apple natively was required.


I'm not going to delete what I've written above, for the sake of posterity, as I found the following out while I was typing the above, but a new article in the Telegraph today is now saying that the app is working the way it was originally designed and will not use location services at all and will use the new Apple and Google SDKs and indeed run decentralised.
IF this is true, I will absolutely download the app and recommend everybody else do the same. It goes against everything I've read about this app though in the IT space, so I will do some more research. If this is true and either the reports I read about the app are incorrect or the app has been changed either as a result of public backlash or as a result of it not working, I apologise to all, especially @ark104 (v2)

I have a glimmer of hope now that this app will work.

 

So, it is still centralized, unfortunately, but it does use BLE. I profusely apologise for spreading misinformation on that one.

The articles I was reading in the tech space have now all been edited to reflect this, and I now have a few websites to put on my **** list.

The app only uses location if you choose to share it and the app will work fully even if you say no. A caveat that on Android location is required for the BLE to work - That's the same across all apps that use BLE, not just this one.

Yes, it is centralised, but it will still work. That was my main hang-up about it.

I want to say that I will now be downloading this app (but not turning location services on, as I'm on iOS), should I have to leave the house for any reason.

Again, sorry all for spreading misinformation in the way that I have on here. I will go back and edit my old posts to include this, for anyone else reading this thread in the future.

 

I’m no expert, and tech whizz... but we are all tracked anyway if we have a mobile. Either by Google or as I’ve said before phone tower pings which can locate anyone within a reasonable area

https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/03/g...ports-feeding-off-users-location-history/amp/

 

No apology needed at all. I don't even understand the basics of the technical side. I am however convinced of the role an app can play and am just concerned people weren't intending to use it so was unusually argumentative. Of course if the government were more competent then people would be more trusting!