This title is kind of exaggerated. In order to obtain this data you'd need to get the Bluetooth identifiers from the system log. In order to get the system log, you need root or adb. At that point you can just log GPS directly, inject code straight into the COVID tracking app, etc. All bets are off.
It’s a little surprising how much effort went into things early in the pandemic that didn’t pan out.<p>Official contact tracing in the US is a complete dud and had negligible impact on the spread. People informing their fiends/family “hey I just got Covid you should probably test/isolate” was what practically can make a difference.<p>Ventilators were the critical thing until we realized they were a very sub optimal treatment.<p>All the surface cleaning was a massive waste too... and the chemicals used in some places destroyed a bunch of furniture.<p>Masks, fresh air, don’t go out when sick or after close contact with someone when sick. Simpler things that make the most difference.
Headline seems to be conflating two different kinds of promises. My recollection is that the promise was that Google and the government wouldn't (couldn't) track you with the data. That appears to be generally true. Finding a bug that exposes some data is unfortunate, but it seems the be an unintentional mistake.<p>tl;dr, they didn't try to do anything evil, they just failed to be 100% perfect.<p>Also as /u/arsome points out elsewhere, the other apps that can read this data could get better data more easily through another method anyway.
just seems like google witch hunt from some random app security firm.<p>Would rather hear from some of the notable developers of say the Canada Covid Alert App about what they think about this
My region never got access to this app, so I’m curious<p>For those who have it, did it change your behavior? Did you have contact and it made you avoid crowded spaces? Did you get tested because of contact logs?
Side topic , how does Google get so highly detailed traffic congestion patterns without transferring gps coordinates from the phones ? Or if they do, where do they tell the users of phones that they do that (I had several pixel phones and never saw that) ? Is it buried in some fine print ?
Yeah, I wasn't going to touch this shit. Especially when all these people who were going on and on about privacy suddenly decided to about face, it made me very suspicious. No way.