For several weeks we have seen how mobile phones showed a warning indicating that, due to COVID, some apps may begin to appear to use a tracking system that will notify users of possible infections with other people.
Now Radar Covid has appeared, an app created by the Government of Spain to control coronavirus infections.
Using the Google API, communicate mobile phones with each other, so that if we have been close to a mobile of a person with contagion, we will receive a warning indicating that we may be in danger.
At the moment it is available as a pilot program in San Sebastián de La Gomera, Canary Islands, so it will not work outside of that place, and only on android (here is the link).
It uses the ability of mobile phones to send information between them using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). If we go out on the street, the mobile will save the identifiers of all the smartphones that it has approached, and if at any time the owner of one of those smartphones decides to report that it has tested positive, his mobile will notify everyone with whom he has had contact in the last few days.
It is important that all these mobiles have the app installed, so the utility will be null if there is no massive installation of the application.
Radar COVID guarantees security and privacy and is 100% anonymous. For this reason, we do not request your name, your telephone number, or your email address. In that sense, in the app store they report:
[…] we anonymously notify the possible contact you have had in the last 14 days with a person who has been infected using the BLE technology, we anonymously communicate your positive diagnosis and the exposure anonymously to the people with whom you have been in Contact
Regarding privacy, they promise that they do not share private data of the person, and that the sending of the contagion information will be optional.
