Only 4 million more until Australia reaches Scott Morrison’s magic 40% target.
The Australian government has surpassed 6 million downloads of its COVIDSafe coronavirus contact tracing mobile application.
Despite reports last week the app was not really being used by state and territory contact tracers, a statement from Minister for Health Greg Hunt and Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert said COVIDSafe has helped public health officials automate and improve manual contact tracing of the coronavirus and that it is proving to be a valuable tool.
« In Victoria, a person who had not been identified through the normal processes, was notified as being a close contact by the app. That person is now in quarantine, protecting the community from a further potential spread of the virus, » the statement said.
The statement also said since its launch, the COVIDSafe app has received widespread support and endorsement from across the Australian community.
Must read: Australia’s COVIDSafe contact tracing story is full of holes and we should worry
In contrast, Australian researchers have provided a summary of the outstanding issues with COVIDSafe, four weeks since its launch, including that the « 1.5 metres for 15 minutes » claim is meaningless.
« The COVIDSafe app was launched for Android and iOS on 26/04/2020, and within hours several serious privacy and functionality issues were discovered by the tech community, » the team of researchers wrote. « Four weeks later, this app continues to be a privacy risk for anyone who installs it and there is no ETA on when these issues will be resolved. »
Providing recommendations, the privacy update — published by Jim Mussared and Eleanor McMurtry, with contributions from Vanessa Teague and Richard Nelson who had raised their concerns with COVIDSafe a few weeks ago — said the risks of using the COVIDSafe app should be explained to the public.
They also said those who take major concern with tracking should not install COVIDSafe and said the privacy policy must be updated to more accurately reflect what the app actually does.
They said further investigation should also be undertaken to understand how these issues were not detected during testing, why industry best-practices around reporting and managing security issues were not followed, and why the fixes took such a long time to acknowledge and implement.
The researchers also requested the move to the Apple/Google Exposure Notification API be expedited while highlighting that seven main issues with the app still remained unresolved. Five previous issues were now fixed though, they said.
« The tracking issues described in this document have all been relatively easy to exploit, and it only takes one person to package them up into a malicious app for others to use, » the group wrote. « Most importantly though, these privacy issues are not inherent to the functionality of the app, and should have been caught during development and review.
