Australia Launches COVIDSafe Contact Tracing App for iOS and Android

Australia is one of the first countries to launch a contact tracing app, called COVIDSafe while trying to navigate the privacy issues that are bound to appear.

One of the ways to track the pandemic’s community spread is to use the smart devices everyone is carrying around, but that will likely bring security and privacy issues, no matter how good the implementation really is.

The Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem is full of exciting concepts that lack proper security, and expanding the use of smartphones to track people is difficult to implement. Six months ago, proposing this solution to people would have been impossible, but now every tool is needed to fight the pandemic.

According to The Register report, the new app from the Australian government asks users to provide their names, age range, phone number, and postcode. A unique ID is created based on this data, and that ID is shared with other people that have the app installed.

Users who test positive for the new coronavirus have the option to notify health authorities, which in turn will notify everyone that was in direct contact with the sick people, but without giving out names or other data.

The contact data will remain on devices for 21 days, which is longer than the equivalent solution prepared by Google and Apple. Some of the data will be stored on servers longer than 21 days, and will only be accessible to health authorities.

It turns out that the app is not open source, but it uses some code from Singapore’s equivalent. Furthermore, some of the data is stored on AWS servers in the United States, which has the potential to create problems down the line. But now that the application is out in the wild, on both iOS and Android, people will try to find vulnerabilities and other security issues.