UK Virus-Tracing App Switches To Apple-Google Model

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: In a major U-turn, the UK is ditching the way its current coronavirus-tracing app works and shifting to a model based on technology provided by Apple and Google. The Apple-Google design has been promoted as being more privacy-focused. However, it means epidemiologists will have access to less data. The government now intends to launch an app in the autumn, however it says the product may not involve contact tracing at that point. Instead the software may be limited to enabling users to report their symptoms and order a test. Baroness Dido Harding -- who heads up the wider Test and Trace program -- will only give the green light to actually deploying the Apple-Google technology if she judges it to be fit for purpose, which she does not believe is the case at present. It is possible this may never happen. Germany, Italy and Denmark are among other countries to have switched from a so-called "centralized" approach to a "decentralized" one. The centralized version trialled on the Isle of Wight worked well at assessing the distance between two users, but was poor at recognizing Apple's iPhones. Specifically, the software registered about 75% of nearby Android handsets but only 4% of iPhones. By contrast, the Apple-Google model logged 99% of both Android mobiles and iPhones.

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