Massachusetts health notifications app installed without users’ knowledge

Post by webinvest » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #326

madars wrote: post #261

I was reading about this yesterday and confirmed that I did not have gov.ma.covid19.exposurenotifications.v3 nor gov.ma.covid19.exposurenotifications installed. I turned off auto-updates in the Play store (Settings -> Network preferences -> Auto update apps -> Don't auto update apps) and went to sleep. This morning I woke up with a cheerful notification that Google can help with COVID notifications and gov.ma.covid19…

Remember when Tim Cook put Bono's album in the iTunes library of everybody? That's when it felt that the smartphones are not our devices. Someone you don't know can and U2 album to your library without you ask for it or being able to do anything about it. You can understand it with an OS update. It's the new shiny thing that comes with bunch of stuff and this new one has this new app. However, getting it without acti…

Post by mackal » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

mackal wrote: post #296

TomOwens wrote: post #140

Most of the comments on that app as well as here are probably wrong. I'd suspect that everyone who had the app "installed without their permission" opted into the Android COVID-19 Exposure Notification program. This was deployed by Google as part of an update to Google Play Services. When you go to your phone's settings with this update, there's an option to enable COVID-19 Exposure Notifications. When you turn it on…

This speculation is 100% wrong. I checked for this app after seeing this and had it listed under updates available (it was installed already) So I decided to check if I was in fact opted in and I was not opted in. Everything was off and this app was still installed without my consent. I do have automatic UPDATES turned on, but that shouldn't tell Google to just push whatever they want to me. You should probably edit…

Post by neycoda » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

madars wrote: post #272

notwhereyouare wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you check your covid19 exposure opt-in settings? Of everything you mentioned you checked, I didn’t see you say you checked that setting. That setting could be what caused the install

Yes, I confirmed last night that Settings -> Google -> COVID-19 Exposure Notifications was off. (Aside, I read somewhere but have not confirmed this myself that manually enabling that setting leads to a flow for installing the gov.ma.covid19.exposurenotifications app, whereas the forced update is gov.ma.covid19.exposurenotifications.v3 -- note the extra v3). By the way, MassNotify app is not visible from Play Store s…

Post by zo1 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #88

marcan_42 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read up on how the contact tracing apps work. They do not upload your data to the cloud. Phones broadcast a rolling random identifier, other phones collect received identifiers, and only on confirmed infection does the person's phone upload its last two weeks of broadcast IDs to the cloud, where other phones can grab them and cross-check. Having someone's phone number allows you (via the phone company) to trace their…

I think the low adoption is because it's hard to explain. No one on my street, none of the most vulnerable people would understand your paragraph. No wonder it's not being adopted by those who should be adopting it, but just being used by vigilant young tech savvy and already covid safe people. So not only are only a small number of people using it, these people are least likely to make a difference using it.

Post by ehsankia » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #346

ehsankia wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't contact tracing actually more useful when the number of cases are reasonably low?

Only if coupled with a public health program that does something. We might reach the ring vaccination stage, where each case triggers contact tracing and testing and vaccination of all contacts and the people around them. That's how smallpox was wiped out.