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I'm going to go on a rant because I keep seeing the same misconceptions reported about Canada's COVID Alert app.
Constantly framing the story around privacy concerns only begets privacy concerns. The app *does not* share with the government, or anyone, a user's name, location or health information. COVID Alert asks users what province they're in but you can even select "PREFER NOT TO SAY."
Let's stop saying "the app is not effective because only X percent of people have it." Oxford researchers found "digital exposure notification can effectively reduce infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 at AT ALL LEVELS OF PARTICIPATION." https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.29.20184135v1.full.pdf
No one knows how many people have received an exposure notification in Canada because privacy features make it unknowable. Devices exchange codes directly from one to another. They do not send a signal to a central server. No one is hiding the data.
Just because someone has tweeted that they received an exposure notification and that they then tested negative for COVID-19... this is not evidence that the app doesn't work. Not every exposure leads to infection. Better to know, than to not know, no?
It's true COVID Alert only works on smartphones made in the past 5 years or so. That's all the Apple-Google framework will allow. Indeed, it's unfortunate more people won't be able to download it because of that. It's also unfortunate more people who can... don't.
