The collaboration between Apple and Google It continues to provide national health authorities with technical bases for making COVID-19 information requests. The program is based on the basic principles of privacy, security and transparency: over the last week, both companies have updated documents on Bluetooth and cryptography in development tools.
Today, Apple and Google are offering more developer resources ability to create systems that use the system: as we have already told you, it is the responsibility of each country to develop its own system, which can only be developed by the appropriate public health authority. Through them, the technology that exists today provide source code for both iOS and Android for building these apps, as well as an example of how to show screens how to have a user-friendly flow. The iOS source code can now be downloaded from Apple's developer.
Apple and Google provide governments with a sample code source code to use their notification system
Basic requirements include the explicit consent of the user join the program and share the best results (and a random identifier created). Similarly, Apple and Google make it clear that these apps can't ask no additional permissions (how to work geolocation) and not included no advertising. Let's take a look at the proposed screens provided by the authorities:
Example of a welcome screen
The app shows a welcome screen here, explaining what it means to use exposure notifications, and what the program contains at the privacy and performance level. The text, on the welcome screen and on the following information shown to the user, can be customized for each country.
An example of sending a positive test
False claims will be avoided by confirming the tests performed by the health authority
In order to report a positive to the COVID-19 test, steps are taken against false reports: when submitting our result, you must enter a separate code for the test we performed and the date it was performed. This information, if we agree to share it with the competent government, will be used and that is where our secretly generated keys will be marked "positive".
An example of an advertisement notification
If disclosed, we will be notified by telephone to inform us. By clicking on it, we will get to the app screens where all the "good" displays are shown, and details of whether this is displayed verified it has become the health authority of the country – and the day we got closer to that person.
Settings in iOS to enable or disable the application
It is available in beta 3 for iOS 13.5 that we saw last week. On the iPhone, the exposure notification may apply to Privacy / Health from iOS. Here we can look at or choose to participate in the program at any time. If we do not save it, even if it is installed by the country application, sharing and tracking will be disabled. In this same section, we will see details about the operating system at all times, as well as the number of other users' checks that the system has compared since the program was running.
Next steps
Apple and Google will continue to operate developing tools for making progress with the program, before the launch is scheduled for the end of this month Last week, Apple introduced the new version for Xcode 11.5 developers with tools pre-launch is required to run applications made with the Notification API API.
The final version of the API will be released by the end of this month, but you can start working with the scripts and tools provided by Apple and Google before launching.
Companies insist the importance of having a single official app, supported by the government of each country – with the aim of avoiding fragmentation and increasing the amount of program approval. However, they are willing to support technologically those countries that choose to transfer the construction of this program to regional level, within themselves.
Also regularly update all information about the program, its documentation and frequently asked questions, where Apple is located on a special page for this purpose.
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