Apple and Google work together to release the anti-infection tool Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic is so raging in the United States that forcing two rival rivals like Apple and Google to work together to create a system to track the path of the infected person and limit the spread of it.

However, instead of creating apps for each iOS and Android platform, the system Apple and Google work with will create APIs for licensed corona or other health applications. can access the data in that system.

For example, Alice talks to Bob for 10 minutes – while their phones exchange anonymous signaling landmarks. A few days later, Bob is positive for the corona virus and his phone will upload the key of this marker to the cloud for a 14-day storage period.

In theory, this system could be used to track contact with people infected with corona virus by: when a person is found to be positive for corona virus, they can give test results. on the health app associated with the above API. This results in an “anonymous marker” about the user.

The landmark will then be uploaded to the cloud by the application with a temporary storage period of 14 days. When an infected person has been in close contact with someone for long enough, this milestone will be shared anonymously via short-range Bluetooth between smartphones – whether Android or iPhone.

Alice’s phone will periodically download the key lock of the signatures of positive people in the area. If it matches the signal mark that the phone used to exchange data, it will issue a notification to Alice.

If the contacted smartphone has a health app installed using the API above, it will notify users that they have been exposed to a positive person with the virus recently. Users will then be instructed to test and conduct self-isolation measures to avoid spreading to others.

Respect confidentiality and privacy

Exposure tracking is being seen as one of the important tools to prevent the spread of corona virus. As a result, a number of governments around the world, including Israel, Thailand, and Hong Kong, have developed their own application versions to track down people infected with the virus and isolate contacts.

However, the difference in the system that Apple and Google have just implemented is the security and privacy of users.

The first is that the system does not use GPS data on the phone, the connection and data sharing is done via Bluetooth close-range – communication technology does not exploit the user’s actual location. Therefore, close contacts will only receive notification of their contact with an infected person, not their location.

In addition, the system implements many safeguards to avoid revealing the identity of the person infected with the virus. Milestones, though shared between devices via Bluetooth, are constantly changing the key lock every 15 minutes to ensure privacy. Not only that, these keys are only shared during the time they were infected.

More importantly, there will not be a centralized database for the list of infected phones. That’s because every smartphone itself performs encryption calculations to protect users’ privacy. Instead of interacting directly with the phone, centralized servers store only key keys shared by the phone – and they change constantly as mentioned above.

Stages of the project

Engineers from the two companies have just launched the project two weeks ago, and it is expected that by mid-May, this contact tracking API will be released by Apple and Google for applications on both iOS and Android. . However, this is only the first phase of the project and it still requires users to download an application that contains this API to receive timely notifications.

Therefore, in phase 2 of this initiative, the contact tracking tool will be integrated into the operating system level of each platform. Therefore users will no longer need to install third-party applications and still receive notifications of possible infection. Such deep integration also helps to improve battery life, efficiency and security. But this will take a few more months to become a reality.

Although there are some limitations, but this is a quite effective program thanks to the cooperation of the two giants on the mobile device platform today. The system has not yet been able to replace the traditional contact tracking methods – such as interviewing an infected person about their travel route and meeting people – but it can also provide a useful complement when Smartphones are devices used by billions of people today.

Refer to The Verge