Some friends of mine (in collaboration with Stanford University) are seeking beta testers for a COVID-19 contact-tracing app, Covid Watch.
The main concerns with an app like this are privacy and security. They don’t want the app to be become a surveillance mechanism for the government or open up personal information to be abused by marketers etc.
Therefore, Covid Watch is built to mitigate potential for abuse. There is no personal information collected. There is no GPS or location data collected. None of those are required for the system to work. And every aspect of it is opt-in.
It is set up as a non-profit, the code is open source, and it’s part of the global TCN coalition of tracing apps.
Effective and acceptable anonymous contact tracing coupled with wide-spread testing is a promising way for us to get things back to normal.
Co-housing residents and essential workers are especially helpful testers because you’re already regularly exposed to a broad group of individuals which can help the developers test for accuracy.
The only requirement is that you (+anyone you live with) have at least 2 devices to test with. Sign up here to help:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVASIIdi4mn-RQ5FNj6RScUqDXshA_Y3UbVJqX0anMmoE-sw/viewform
This image expains how the app works. More details here:
https://covid-watch.org/article
The main concerns with an app like this are privacy and security. They don’t want the app to be become a surveillance mechanism for the government or open up personal information to be abused by marketers etc.
Therefore, Covid Watch is built to mitigate potential for abuse. There is no personal information collected. There is no GPS or location data collected. None of those are required for the system to work. And every aspect of it is opt-in.
It is set up as a non-profit, the code is open source, and it’s part of the global TCN coalition of tracing apps.
Effective and acceptable anonymous contact tracing coupled with wide-spread testing is a promising way for us to get things back to normal.
Co-housing residents and essential workers are especially helpful testers because you’re already regularly exposed to a broad group of individuals which can help the developers test for accuracy.
The only requirement is that you (+anyone you live with) have at least 2 devices to test with. Sign up here to help:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVASIIdi4mn-RQ5FNj6RScUqDXshA_Y3UbVJqX0anMmoE-sw/viewform
This image expains how the app works. More details here:
https://covid-watch.org/article