Apple and Google still plan to release APIs to let governments use signals picked up from smartphones to alert people who may have been exposed to someone infected with Covid-19. On Friday, they announced some privacy tweaks and other changes.
announced new updates on Friday to their proposed system that will enable iOS and Android phones trace the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.
The updated system includes security and privacy enhancements that representatives from governments and public health authorities have asked for, the companies said.plans to build new technology into iOS and Android to make it possible to make contact tracing apps, which will track when people have been in close proximity to somebody who has tested positive for coronavirus, and allow public health officials to notify them that they might have been exposed.
Apple and Google aren't building the apps. Contact tracing apps will be built deployed by public health officials, and both Apple and Google's app stores have restrictions around coronavirus apps that aren't from a recognized authority. Apple and Google's APIs will become available in mid-May, the companies previously said.
On Friday, the companies changed the terminology they're using to describe the system, calling it "exposure notification," as opposed to "contact tracing." They did this to differentiate it from traditional contact tracing practices in public health organizations, which rely on people to make lots of phone calls to warn people that they may have been exposed to someone with Covid-19.
Governments are now pressing Apple to lift some of these privacy provisions so that they can build apps in conjunction with a centralized database, which would allow human contact tracers working for the government to call people and tell them they might have been exposed.
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