Is COVIDSafe app a “PSYOPS” app designed to track movements? Fact Check

A viral message is spreading online about the Australian COVIDSafe contact tracing app that was launched in the country in April 2020. The message makes a number of claims concerning the privacy and security of the app.

MOSTLY FALSE

The message can be seen below.

[FEEL FREE TO COPY AND PASTE]
To ANYONE who has downloaded the Orwellian named ‘CovidSafe’ PSYOPS tracking app.
I kindly request you to delete me from your phone contacts list and from every social media platform you utilise IMMEDIATELY – you do not have my consent to use my number in connection to your phones app for ID, tracking or location or any other reason by having your Bluetooth constantly open, leaving yourself wide open to data theft.
For and on the record, you do not have my consent to include me in whatever it is you are doing regarding your own personal choice to utilise said app and I withdraw all consent for you to involve me or retain my contact information.
My non-negotiable reasons for my request are:
1. Bluetooth isn’t permanently on with other apps – this app requires Bluetooth to be on and phone left unlocked, leaving the user wide open to Bluesnarfing (data theft).
2. Amazon – a morally questionable multinational corporation that enables environmentally destructive trade & practices including human rights abuses of slave labour – is in charge of storing the data.
3. Your data can and no doubt will be sold on
4. It allows the government to monitor your every move and the movements and personal data of other people you come into contact that neither use the app nor consented to use it.
5. Currently, yes, you are being tracked without your consent (which is illegal), but by accepting ((their)) terms and conditions (in all that fine print) then downloading and using the app, you are consenting for them to track you and use your data, not just for the app, but for whatever they want later on.
6. By accepting this invasive app, it softens up the minds of the public into thinking a ID biochip ‘isn’t all that bad,.
7. It sends a message to the government that we the people are weak and stupid enough to let them introduce further unlawful legislation to erode liberties, rights and freedoms.
Thank you for respecting my wishes.

The message seems to be reference to the COVIDSafe app, which was launched in Australia in April 2020 to help with contact tracing over the COVID-19 pandemic. The app is designed to be used by Australians only, but the message above does not mention this, leading to many people outside of Australia sharing the message.

The message makes a number of claims about the COVIDSafe app. Most are baseless or false. We examine each claim below.

To ANYONE who has downloaded the Orwellian named ‘CovidSafe’ PSYOPS tracking app.

PSYOPS is a term often used in the conspiracy theory world, and stands for “psychological operations”. Broadly, the term is used to refer to any operation that is designed to artificially influence opinion, be it within a particular demographic or the public at large. However, when used to promote conspiracies, the term is typically used to refer to events that a conspiracy theorist believes were faked by the government or “deep state”, such as terrorist attacks or mass shootings. The inclusion of the word here indicates the author believes the tracing app isn’t to be used for its intended purpose, rather to be somehow used to orchestrate some type of psychological operation.

I kindly request you to delete me from your phone contacts list and from every social media platform you utilise IMMEDIATELY – you do not have my consent to use my number in connection to your phones app for ID, tracking or location or any other reason by having your Bluetooth constantly open, leaving yourself wide open to data theft.
For and on the record, you do not have my consent to include me in whatever it is you are doing regarding your own personal choice to utilise said app and I withdraw all consent for you to involve me or retain my contact information.

A few years ago we dealt with the silly yet persistent notion that copying and pasting legal-sounding words on your Facebook profile somehow had some legal ramification as to what Facebook could do with your data. This portion of the message is similar in its insinuation, and in case there is any confusion, it should be noted that no one is legally required to remove another person from social media or from their phone contacts because that person demanded so in a ‘copy and paste’ post on their social media profile.

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My non-negotiable reasons for my request are:
1. Bluetooth isn’t permanently on with other apps – this app requires Bluetooth to be on and phone left unlocked, leaving the user wide open to Bluesnarfing (data theft).

It is true that Bluetooth needs to be enabled for the app to work, since the app uses Bluetooth to detect if a user comes into contact with another user using the app. That’s because – despite claims to the contrary – the COVIDSafe app does not use GPS location data to determine if you’ve come into contact with others (more on that later.)

As for having to leave the phone unlocked, this only applies to iPhone (Apple) users. On Android phones, the phone can be locked as normal providing the app is running in the background. For iPhone users, it is recommended that the phone needs to be unlocked since an app running in the background of a locked phone has trouble utilising Bluetooth. This could rightly be off-putting to iPhone users. It is possible that this may be fixed in the future but for now this remains an issue.

Amazon – a morally questionable multinational corporation that enables environmentally destructive trade & practices including human rights abuses of slave labour – is in charge of storing the data.

This part of the message likely refers to plans to store data on Amazon’s Web Servers cloud storage facilities. That’s true, though a few things to note: Amazon is one of the largest hosts of cloud storage on the Internet, and are used by countless other services, meaning you already most likely have a plethora of information about you already stored on their cloud storage services. Such storage is required to prevent downtime or issues that may occur by using a smaller or lesser known service. Amazon itself doesn’t have access to the data stored on their cloud storage services.

Your data can and no doubt will be sold on

This claim doesn’t appear to be based on anything other than a mistrust of the Australian government. The privacy policy of the app which details the ways data can be used is here.

It should be noted that the data the app collects about a person includes a name (provided by the user) their phone number, postcode and age range. Information about who you have come into contact with is encrypted and deleted after 21 days. Location data and full address is not collected. A user is also asked to share if they test positive for COVID-19 (since that is how contact tracing works.)
 

It allows the government to monitor your every move and the movements and personal data of other people you come into contact that neither use the app nor consented to use it.

As stated above, the app doesn’t monitor a user’s location. Rather it uses Bluetooth to detect proximity to other users who have the app. It does not collect information or personal data on people who don’t use the app.

Note: Android users may notice the app requests permission to collect location data. This is how Android permissions work since it needs access to Bluetooth. However this does not mean the app records or uploads information concerning your location.

Currently, yes, you are being tracked without your consent (which is illegal), but by accepting ((their)) terms and conditions (in all that fine print) then downloading and using the app, you are consenting for them to track you and use your data, not just for the app, but for whatever they want later on.

Again, the app does not collect location information on a user, and the privacy policy (previously linked to) discloses what purposes the data is collected for.

By accepting this invasive app, it softens up the minds of the public into thinking a ID biochip ‘isn’t all that bad,.
It sends a message to the government that we the people are weak and stupid enough to let them introduce further unlawful legislation to erode liberties, rights and freedoms.

The persistent theory that governments across the world are determined to implant tracking chips in citizens to monitor their movements has been a long standing conspiracy theory for numerous decades. The claim that downloading an optional contact tracing app “softens” people to an invasive tracking chip is baseless.

Overall, the message above is alarmist and inaccurate, authored by someone with little to no knowledge of how apps and their permissions work. While it is right to concerned over user privacy, and while the message above does raise some genuine concerns over the Bluetooth functionality concerning iPhone users, we don’t recommend proliferating the message in full since it contains a number of inaccurate or baseless statements.