Have phones been automatically signed up to COVID-19 contact tracing? Fact Check

A message is circulating social media that claims those who do not have a contact tracing app installed on their phone have been automatically signed up to contact tracing without their permission.

Some variants of the messages go on to say that a user can disable it by going into their phone’s settings and disabling the option COVID-19 Exposure Notifications (for Android.) Other variants claim that it is a “COVID-19 sensor” that was secretly installed on phones during a period of phone disruption.

FALSE

Examples of the claim as they appear on social media can be seen below.

Android users BEWARE, google automatically signed you up to COVID-19 tracing app
If you use an Android phone, and have not installed the COVIDSafe app, then you may have COVID-19 Exposure Notification already on your phone.
To check:
1. Go to Settings
2. Scroll down to Google Services and launch
3. If COVID-19 Exposure Notifications is on top of the list, then tap on the three dots on the top right hand corner of your screen
4. Tap Usage & Diagnostics
5. Turn off
Check regularly in case the Android system turns this on automatically.

You don’t need to download the app
Your phone will do it automatically and here’s how to check if you have an android – I found it on mine
Just checked and it WAS installed on my phone!! Shall be keeping a very close eye on what else they add/turn on against my will. Obviously built some permissions into last contract updates none of us ever read
Urgent Please Share!!!
If you use an Android phone, and have not installed the COVIDSafe app, then you may have COVID-19 Exposure Notification already on your phone.
To check:
1. Go to Settings
2. Scroll down to Google Services and launch
3. If COVID-19 Exposure Notifications is on top of the list, then tap on the three dots on the top right hand corner of your screen
4. Tap Usage & Diagnostics
5. Turn off

Sooo when everyone was having “phone disruptions” earlier this week, they were adding COVID-Trackers to our phones… if you have an Android phone, go under Settings, then GOOGLE settings and it’s there.. If you have an IPhone, go to settings, privacy then health. … I don’t think you really overstand what they’re trying to do here.

BEWARE AMERICANS……FYI: Do you know that a ” COVID-19 ” sensor has been inserted secretly into every phone. Apparently when every one was having a phone disruption earlier this week, they were adding COVID -19 tracker to our phones
If you have an android phone, go under settings, then look for Google settings and see if it’s there.
If you are using an IPhone, go under settings, privacy, then health, it’s there but not yet functional. The app can notify you if you’ve been near someone that have reported having COVID-19.
Don’t turn it on because you will be tracked everywhere you go but once you update your phone, it will automatically be turned on on our phones.
Copied from a friend
I checked and it is there but not turned on. This is getting crazy!!!!

The messages are false. Neither Android or Apple phone users have been automatically signed up for COVID-19 tracking. What users are seeing here are options developed by Google and Apple that are designed to work in conjunction with a track and tracing app that the user would need to install themselves. On Android phones, this option is labelled COVID-19 Exposure Notifications. On Apple phones, the option is called COVID-19 Exposure Logging.

These option are actually designed to work alongside an installed contact tracing app that uses either the Android or Apple API. We explain below.

The vast majority of contact tracing apps work primarily by using Bluetooth to detect if two people using the same contact tracing app come into close proximity with each other. If that happens, the two phones swap anonymous Bluetooth ID numbers. This means each phone builds a log of Bluetooth ID numbers from phones they’ve been in proximity with. If someone is diagnosed with COVID-19, these ID numbers are fed into an installed contact tracing app, which then notifies the corresponding people that they’ve been exposed and to get tested.

It’s a system that is designed to minimise the amount of personal information that is needed to be shared with the contact tracing app. Such a system doesn’t even need to use GPS to track users to work. (Though some contact tracing apps do optionally ask for GPS data to identify “hot spots”.)

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Different countries or regions are developing their own contact tracing apps. Some of these are standalone apps that do all the work themselves. However, some can integrate with the Android or Apple software on a person’s phone, meaning the tracing app and Android/iOS software work in conjunction to perform the tracing abilities we described above.

Apps that use the latter method can be activated using shortcuts in the Android/Apple software. These shortcuts are called COVID-19 Exposure Notifications in Android phones and COVID-19 Exposure Logging in Apple phones. These shortcuts allow a user to change settings within the tracing app without having to open (or search through) the tracing app itself. For example, a user could switch off the tracing apps ability to swap Bluetooth ID numbers (which we described above) without having to go into the tracing app.

But of course, a user must have a contact tracing app installed for these shortcuts to do anything. If no tracing app is installed, these shortcuts will still appear, but they’ll be meaningless. It’s like having a light switch but no light bulb. It’s an option (switch) to something that is not installed.

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Following the instructions provided in some variants of these messages about turning off the Usage and Diagnostics option is wholly pointless. All that does is prevents your phone from sending anonymous diagnostic data to the manufacturer to help them compile various statistics.

The claim that the COVID-19 Exposure Notifications feature demonstrates that you’ve somehow been covertly signed up to contact tracing without your permission is false.

It is worth noting that there are plans in the future by Google and Apple to expand on their contact tracing integration so there is no need to install any third party contact tracing app. However this would be an opt-in feature that a user would have to expressly give their permission to for it to work.

In the meantime, the COVID-19 Exposure Notifications option is a setting that needs a third party (Google API) contact tracing app to work. Without it, it’s a redundant option. We rank the claim that it indicates a user has been automatically signed up to contact tracing as false.