Google - sneaky or what?

[chris p bacon]

50 minutes ago, spamcan61 said:

Some seem to work pretty well.

 

But they don't, all have flaws.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53095336

 

The NHS has been testing both systems against each other, over the course of the past month.

The centralised version trialled on the Isle of Wight worked well at assessing the distance between two users, but was poor at recognising 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. But its distance calculations were weaker. 

In some instances, it could not differentiate between a phone in a user's pocket 1m (3.3ft) away and a phone in a user's hand 3m (9.8ft) away.

 

 

Edited June 21, 2020 by chris p bacon

[melmerby]

One of the problems with tracing apps is that to work properly, nearly everyone needs to be "on air"

Not everyone has phones with blue tooth, not everyone has bluetooth switched on on those phones that have it. As blue tooth is a battery flattener many will likely not have it enabled.

Another factor in success in tracing is how much you want your privacy compromised.

The more it is compromised, the better tracing can be.

 

A quick scan of the 'net shows that there are many different incompatible versions out there, all having some features better and some worse than others.

 

[DCB]

At this rate it will soon be an offence to leave the house without your phone,  I guess it already is in China.

[Steamport Southport]

Never mind. At least it's not a U2 album....

 

 

 

 

Jason

[John Harris]

The furore about contract tracing is mildly amusing. 

 

The NHS and local authorities already do contract tracing for TB and certain STIs, all perfectly efficiently and without some fancy app.

 

Of course, there might be more cases of Covid-19, but unless the person in question has been to see a few known individuals some sort of app is required, saying they went on the No.25 bus or the 8:35pm train from town is not much help.

 

jh

[AY Mod]

1 hour ago, DavidCBroad said:

At this rate it will soon be an offence to leave the house without your phone,  I guess it already is in China.

 

Are you going all racist on us again?

[phil-b259]

45 minutes ago, John Harris said:

The furore about contract tracing is mildly amusing. 

 

The NHS and local authorities already do contract tracing for TB and certain STIs, all perfectly efficiently and without some fancy app.

 

Of course, there might be more cases of Covid-19, but unless the person in question has been to see a few known individuals some sort of app is required, saying they went on the No.25 bus or the 8:35pm train from town is not much help.

 

jh

 

I would suggest the big difference with STIs is you have to get intimate with someone to catch them while you can contract Covid simply by being a meter away from someone or from a mired of sources like door handles!

 

Consequently the number of folk who can be infected is much larger and what works for STIs will NOT work for Covid-19 - the volume of cases is so large it requires automation and quick results.

 

Not sure about how TB compares, but I would suggest its a pretty rare infection these days (unlike Covid-19) and manual systems can cope.

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

I would suggest the big difference with STIs is you have to get intimate with someone to catch them while you can contract Covid simply by being a meter away from someone or from a mired of sources like door handles!

 

STIs and door handles?

 

Lets not go there......

 

[Gwiwer]

I was not best pleased to find this sneaked onto my phone without notice. 
 

I wasn’t at all impressed that I learned about it from a nurse in Australia who is a former work colleague of mine. 
 

Something which has the potential to confine me to barracks for two weeks should at the very least have been offered for my acceptance and notified by the provider no matter how well intentioned it is. 
 

In my case the phone is my own. I wish to retain as much control as is reasonably practicable over its use, content and anything inbound. 
 

It does require an app downloaded and activated.  It does require bluetooth activated. But I still have privacy concerns that this just arrives in a sneaky unnanounced way.  Had I not been alerted by my friend this topic would have been the first I had heard of it. 
 

Contact tracing is well intentioned but is not foolproof and can be abused.  Nothing in cyberspace is totally secure. Including this post. 

 

[ejstubbs]

5 hours ago, melmerby said:

Not everyone has phones with blue tooth, not everyone has bluetooth switched on on those phones that have it. As blue tooth is a battery flattener many will likely not have it enabled.

 

Not everyone has a smartphone, or a smartphone which still gets updates from the manufacturer.  Like mine - an Android phone that was a class leader in its day but which I bought second-hand for comparative peanuts vs the cost of a brand new top of the range phone, and which I run on a cheap SIM-only contract which offers no phone upgrade perks for renewal.  And it does everything I want it to.

 

This tracing approach does seem to be based on the assumption that a sufficient proportion of phones out there will get the update, and run an app which uses it, to make the coverage of the overall population sufficient to make the tracing usefully effective.  It's almost as if it implicitly relies on the all-too-popular throwaway "upgrade NOW to get umpteen free minutes and a 'free' brand new phone for only £30+ pounds a month" model.  That might have worked in South Korea but I'm not sure it's guaranteed to here.

 

IMO the above is at least as much of a barrier to the ultimate usefulness of phone-based tracking as any supposed issues with bluetooth itself.  (FWIW my phone has bluetooth switched on all the time and I've never noticed it to be a significant battery drain.)

 

I also wonder whether the fact that so many phones are likely not to be participating actively in the tracing "mesh" is a reason why a centralised approach was felt to be preferable.  (That, plus all the hook-ins to the rest of the COVID-19 treatment and support functions that a centralised approach would facilitate, and which appears to have been a major goal of the UK government's abandoned "world beating" app.)

Edited June 21, 2020 by ejstubbs

[APOLLO]

In the news today you may need an "app" to enter a pub when they re-open - certainly being looked at from a high level.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8444181/Drinkers-register-online-visiting-pubs-says-Matt-Hancock.html

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/21/pubs-restaurants-register-customers-contact-details-track-trace/      (Paywall)

 

So that's me ******* with my old Razr !!!!!!!!!

 

As to China, mobile phones etc - this is the future - watch from 4min 50 sec - scary !!

20 seconds from committing a minor violation (Jay walking) to instant facial recognition to found guilty and money taken from your bank account showing on your mobile phone !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Will we ever go back to "normal" ?

 

Brit15

[monkeysarefun]

They had the app rolled out here the  end of April, and there was  a huge push to get everyone to install it, Pretty much everyone who intended to did it in the first few days, and the take up rate has been about 40%  and steady. Talk of it by the government seems to have vanished over the last couple of weeks, but I guess having little to no  community spread renders it not as necessary at the moment.

[bimble]

When they had that mini-outbreak associated with a cluster of nightclubs in South Korea, they were able to get in touch with ~36,000 people inside of 24hrs to let them know that they might have come into contact and that they should get tested.

 

This is the advantage of a smartphone based app has, unlike the trace & contact, if you come close to someone you don't know the app is aware and if one of you records a positive test it can let you know that you should be checked. But someone calling and asking that person who've they seen, they wouldn't know to give your contacts, so you'll never know.

 

The government complaining that phones couldn't tell the difference between 1m and the phone in the pocket, and 3m and the phone out in the open really shouldn't matter. I'd rather accept that I might have been slightly too far away to have actually have a high chance of catching something and being tested, than having no idea because the person I was queuing next to didn't have contact details for me. 

[boxbrownie]

10 hours ago, APOLLO said:

 

 

As to China, mobile phones etc - this is the future - watch from 4min 50 sec - scary !!

20 seconds from committing a minor violation (Jay walking) to instant facial recognition to found guilty and money taken from your bank account showing on your mobile phone !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good.......don’t Jay Walk.....or litter, or let your dog leave its waste on the floor, the only way to stop these minor infractions is to hit where it hurts.

 

Dystopian no, respect for others....yes.

[Gwiwer]

13 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

Not everyone has a smartphone, or a smartphone which still gets updates from the manufacturer.

 

12 hours ago, bimble said:

that mini-outbreak associated with a cluster of nightclubs in South Korea,

 

There may be a connection - actual or inferred - between the wider use of smartphones among younger people and the tendency seen in some places recently for mostly younger people to congregate in large groups such as at protests and raves (not permitted but ... ) and on beaches (permitted but often done in brach of 2m guidelines) 

 

If that section of our population engaging in the most risky behaviour can also be the most reliably monitored then we may be able to get by without expecting the more senior generations to all carry app-loaded, bluetooth-enabled smart phones.  Which many of them probably do but not as many as the Millenials.  

 

12 hours ago, APOLLO said:

you may need an "app" to enter a pub

 

My comment above applies.  This might be open to allegations of discrimination.  It has become the norm for those places where sit-in dining / drinking is permitted to require your phone number as a point of contact but not to require an app.  Australian cafes for instance will require that number but it does not have to be a mobile and no app is required.  Almost everyone has either a mobile or a landline phone these days.  Any discrimination on the basis of having no number available would be very small.  

 

I wonder though how they work around legitimate number privacy such as those on witness protection and hidden numbers for their own safety.  Again the total will be small but these people are equally entitled to avail themselves of such businesses and are likewise reasonably permitted to withold their contact details without discussing why.  

[PhilH]

Skipping through this thread I find it amusing that there are people who still believe there is such a thing as privacy in the modern world. 

Edited June 22, 2020 by PhilH

[boxbrownie]

29 minutes ago, PhilH said:

Skipping through this thread I find it amusing that there are people who still believe there is such a thing as privacy in the modern world. 

Or “need” so much of it 

[Reorte]

32 minutes ago, PhilH said:

Skipping through this thread I find it amusing that there are people who still believe there is such a thing as privacy in the modern world. 

 

More depressed at the lack of it, and at people who don't even grasp why it's an issue.

[Reorte]

Just to add to above - there's certainly a good case for tolerating some lessening of it in situations such as this, but it very much needs to be handled with a great deal of care.

[Phil Parker]

I think the fuss over an non-working App tells me that a vaccine is a waster of time. You'll never get enough people to take it to make a difference.

[spamcan61]

10 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

I think the fuss over an non-working App tells me that a vaccine is a waster of time. You'll never get enough people to take it to make a difference.

To be honest, it's a tough call to choose between taking my chances with a bug which has maybe 0.01% chance of killing me and  taking a vaccine which has been developed and tested in a hell of a rush (relatively speaking)

[Reorte]

Just now, spamcan61 said:

To be honest, it's a tough call to choose between taking my chances with a bug which has maybe 0.01% chance of killing me and  taking a vaccine which has been developed and tested in a hell of a rush (relatively speaking)

 

It depends what's been rushed. If it's just the bureaucratic aspects rather than the scientific side, which I believe is the case (how long does it normally take a drug to go through the system to approval once all the scientific work has been done?) then I'd have no issue with it.

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

 

It depends what's been rushed. If it's just the bureaucratic aspects rather than the scientific side, which I believe is the case (how long does it normally take a drug to go through the system to approval once all the scientific work has been done?) then I'd have no issue with it.

The beaurocracy side is important, it's how they check the science.

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, Phil Parker said:

I think the fuss over an non-working App tells me that a vaccine is a waster of time. You'll never get enough people to take it to make a difference.

They will all be worried the vaccine will carry a sub miniature listening device to chip more privacy away 

[J. S. Bach]

1 minute ago, boxbrownie said:

They will all be worried the vaccine will carry a sub miniature listening device to chip more privacy away 

Done with individually coded radioactive isotopes.