Russia has developed a new application for tracking COVID-19 patients

An application is called Stopcoronavirus. My Contacts ”is currently being tested, and will soon be available for download in the App Store and Google Play.

According to Meduza, citing sources in the government and the federal headquarters for the fight against COVID-19, the application will track mobile devices nearby and warn the user if someone who was within ten meters of it detects coronavirus...

“At the same time, the authorities promise not to collect information about the users themselves”, - the newspaper notes.

However, if the new application is integrated with the Public Services portal, the collection of personalized user data will become possible.

As the TV channel Dozhd clarifies, the application scans the environment within a radius of up to 10 meters via Bluetooth and stores their identifiers. Several times a day, the device downloads from Apple or Google servers information about those devices whose owners have registered as infected with COVID-19, and verifies them against the list of stored identifiers.

Apple and Google said the app is based on Exposure Notification technology. It does not use GPS, so it does not track users' locations. All device contacts within a radius of 10 meters are recorded anonymously. If a person gets sick, he notes this in the application, and notifications are sent to those with whom he contacted.

The developers assure that the data received by the application remains only on the device and is automatically deleted after 14 days. According to the head of the Ministry of Digital Science Maksut Shadayev, installation of the application will be voluntary. However, the more people install it, the more effective it will be.

Previously, similar applications based on Exposure Notification technology were launched in more than 10 countries. Among them are the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Kazakhstan and European countries. Contact tracing programs have been most widespread this year due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection.

In some countries, the introduction of new applications has sparked anxiety over the government's excessive invasion of citizens' privacy. After that, the authorities of some states - for example, Germany - were forced to listen to the opinion of taxpayers and refuse personalized collection of data on the location and contacts of users.