Covid-19 contact-tracing apps that rely on an API developed by Apple and Google and bluetooth technology cannot accurately measure the distance between users on public transport, a recently released study from Trinity College Dublin has found. From a report: The researchers of the study first tested the API on a group of volunteers who switched seats every fifteen minutes in a Dublin tram. They then ran the collected data through the detection rules of the Swiss, German, and Italian contact-tracing apps to see how often they correctly identified contact between users. Based on this, they found that the chance of an accurate detection was “similar to that of triggering notifications by randomly selecting from the participants in our experiments, regardless of proximity.”
So, no better than random. This finding is the latest example of mounting skepticism among experts regarding the effectiveness of the technology underlying the apps which have been widely released — but less widely used — by governments across Europe and more recently the United States. Most contact-tracing apps in Europe and the United States use Apple and Google’s exposure notification API, which in turn relies on in-built wireless Bluetooth technology to estimate the distance between two users and whether they’ve been in contact. What actually constitutes ‘contact’ is set by the developers of whichever app calls the API, but it’s usually defined as being within 2 meters (~6.5 feet) of another user for at least 15 minutes. Once a user uploads a positive test result to a contact-tracing app, it notifies all contacted users and lets them know that they’ve been at risk of infection.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot