OT NHS App scrapped?

[alan_m]

The track and trace app doesn't seem to be doing too well.

[Scott]

I had a colleague whose standard reaction to any management initiative was to shake her head and utter the words 'lot of s**te'.

[ARW]

[Andy Burns]

Yes, the setting appeared on my phone a week or more ago, but it won't do anything without an app to go along with it.

The centralised vs decentralised spin is bollox ... the abandoned NHS method and the google/apple method both store data decentralised on the phone only, up to the point when you report yourself as testing CV19 positive, then they both transfer data to a centralised server.

[Dave Liquorice]

Similar here. last update.

What I don't get is how the decentralised model, that does the comparison on the phone, does so without having to download millions of potential contacts and therefore oodles of data.

[Richard]

Don't worry about it. Apple and Google know everything about us already.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Well we all knew it was a quick and dirty thing. Now both google and Apple have adopted the same protocols for this, it really should mean that the world should base their production apps on their API. Not only is the data more secure but its all the same and this will make cross border use much easier as well. Brian

[alan_m]

And if short of any information they just ask Microsoft who will fill in the blanks.

[Chris Green]

Well, some of us. I don't have any Apple hardware, I stopped using my Android phones a few years ago. I don't use Google for searching.

*If* my mobile is charged and turned on (which is probably only about one day in ten) it will tell 'them' where I am but that's probably about all. Assuming of course that I haven't left it at home, which is quite likely.

[Chris Green]

... and I don't run any MS software either (having already said I don't have any Apple hardware and don't use Google).

[Pancho]

Presumably, two phones exchange (anonymous) ids via Bluetooth when the are close to each other. Upon infection, the phone contacts all the ids it has collected in an appropriate period. These ids are probably contacted using a directory service, this may be central or distributed, like bittorrent.

[alan_m]

It still relies on people downloading an appropriate app AND using it (assuming they have a phone that can run the app)

If the app results in excessive battery drain on a phone people will stop using it either by choice or because their phone switches off.

If people perceive that any app is crap because of too many false positives or the support national infrastructure is poor they are likely to stop using it or just ignore the advice.

[Richard]

In your case, they monitor that black hole *very* closely ;)

OOI, do you drive a vehicle?

[Davidm]

[Paul]

The Bluetooth packet should have a MAC address. You could probably tell from that, it's a Samsung Galaxy 20 with a Broadcom Bluetooth chip in it. But the MAC numbers would not normally be "public" information. The issuing authority keeps the details private.

But nothing prevents phone companies like Apple or Google, from recording the MAC values on each device out there.

Paul

[Pancho]

A directory service for anonymous IDs inevitably maps an anonymous ID to a standard public ID such as IP address or Phone Number.

However the list of Bluetooth contacts is relatively private. It is only published when disease is reported, even then it might be published in a difficult way to capture.

All that is very simple stuff. The clever stuff seems to be in the Bluetooth handshaking, distance calculations.

[Chris Green]

Sometimes, often a motorbike so front facing cameras have had it on that front too! :-)

As we live in quite a rural area one has to travel quite a way before seeing (or being seen by) any cameras. I do go along bits of the A14 which has cameras, but not all that often.

[tim...]

good job that most managers ignore him

otherwise we wouldn't have such stuff as real time tracking of your parcel delivery (or AA man's arrival)

which does, in principle, work even if some carriers f***ed up their implementation

HTH

tim

[Andy Burns]

Well only infected people's data gets uploaded to the central db, and then down to every other phone for comparison, but if the crypto IDs are random (as they're supposed to be) they won't compress well, maybe they just sort them and use deltas?

[Tim+]

?Clever stuff?, ?IT? and ?NHS? aren?t words used together too often. One wonders how they managed to do something better than Apple and Google (distance calculation).

Unless of course it?s bollocks.

Tim