Apple and Google have joined forces to build a contact-tracing system to help fight against virus outbreaks.

One of the most crucial parts of reducing spread in a pandemic is to track and alert people to an infected person they have been in contact with. Having a contact-tracing framework using our mobile devices would potentially reach over three billion people with an Android phone or iPhone – at a much greater scale than the conventional methods could obtain.

Google and Apple plan to launch the program in two phases, starting in mid May. The first phase will be an application programming interface (API), which will make iOS and Android apps capable of tracing users, regardless which mobile operating system they’re using. This will be restricted to official apps released by public health authorities on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store – for obvious security and privacy reasons. The second future phase aims to integrate this platform as a core iOS and Android feature.

The system works on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which has a lower battery consumption than the usual bluetooth. Each user will have a personal ID, which is discoverable on other participating user devices. The system lets your device log other devices that have been nearby, building a log of codes received and when they were received.

If a user has a positive diagnosis, they can choose to submit their ID code to a central database. A local scan can then be run, which finds and sends an alert to IDs that have been in contact and exposed to the virus. In the spec it states the premise that only legitimate healthcare providers will be able to submit a diagnosis, to ensure only confirmed diagnoses are generated.

It has been made extremely difficult for hackers to find personal information on users. Nevertheless, if users share that they’ve tested positive, it is impossible to guarantee user anonymity. Having said that, with any technology under any circumstances, user anonymity from hackers is very hard to 100% guarantee. It is important to note that Apple and Google are sharing as little personal information as possible. Much of the information that will be shared is data that is already accessible elsewhere. it is also very likely that other apps already on users devices hold much more personal information than this platform will.

This system is voluntary on devices and doesn’t share any more data than it needs to, which leads to what could be a powerful solution to battling against virus outbreaks. Despite this, only the protocol has been released so far, and we await a lot of fine detail on how the full system will work. It remains to be seen how governments will try to implement this, and if data privacy will be at risk. Nonetheless, the system is very promising and could have far reaching benefits.