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Privacy

North Dakota's COVID-19 App Has Been Sending Data To Foursquare and Google (fastcompany.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the privacy-woes dept.
The official COVID-19 contact-tracing app for the state of North Dakota, designed to detect whether people have potentially been exposed to the coronavirus, sends location data and a unique user identifier to Foursquare -- and other data to Google and a bug-tracking company -- according to a new report from smartphone privacy company Jumbo Privacy. From a report: The app, called Care19, and produced by a company called ProudCrowd that also makes a location-based social networking app for North Dakota State sports fans, generates a random ID number for each person who uses it. Then, it can "anonymously cache the individual's locations throughout the day," storing information about where people spent at least 10 minutes at a time, according to the state website. If users test positive for the coronavirus, they can provide that information to the North Dakota Department of Health for contact-tracing purposes so that other people who spent time near virus patients can potentially be notified. According to the app's privacy policy, "location data is private to you and is stored securely on ProudCrowd, LLC servers" and won't be shared with third parties "unless you consent or ProudCrowd is compelled under federal regulations."
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North Dakota's COVID-19 App Has Been Sending Data To Foursquare and Google More

North Dakota's COVID-19 App Has Been Sending Data To Foursquare and Google

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  • People are "checking in" with COVID-19?

    • People are "checking in" with COVID-19?

      After the court ruling in Wisconsin overturning the state's stay-at-home order, sure ... "COVID-19, party of 5?"

      • When we were younger, my brother would check in at restaurants under the last name "Donner" on the hopes of hearing the announcement "Donner Party [wikipedia.org], your table is ready".

        • When we were younger, my brother would check in at restaurants under the last name "Donner" on the hopes of hearing the announcement "Donner Party [wikipedia.org], your table is ready".

          I had a friend who use to check into DC restaurants using "Conservative" ... "Conservative Party, your table is ready."

  • Of course! (Score:5, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Friday May 22, 2020 @03:44PM (#60092108)

    North Dakota is the worst of the Dakotas.

  • The government is killing people (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This just goes to show that the government is untrustworthy with all of our tracked data. (As if you needed more evidence.)

    People don't trust the government with their data, for any number of reasons, and so they will _not_ use the apps provided by the government for public health purposes.

    This directly leads to the deaths of citizens. If the government weren't so absolutely hell-bent on tracking everything about every one, perhaps people could trust them.. but instead, the absolute Big Brother behavior of

    • If you want to stop the government spying on everyone then you need to figure out how to make a cellphone network that can't be used to track people. That's the big one we can't live without.

  • The official COVID-19 contact-tracing app for the state of North Dakota ... sends location data and a unique user identifier to Foursquare -- and other data to Google and a bug-tracking company ...

    Colloquially, COVID-19 is a "bug" so ...

  • Congress (or better yet, an Executive Order) needs to be created pronto to enjoin any Contact-Tracing system not being used specifically for tracking criminals on supervised release from collecting, storing, or transmitting information on the user's location.

    • Actually, I think you have that a bit reversed.

      Congress (and NOT AT ALL AN executive order) needs to make a stand here.

      We all need to stop waiting for the strongman to save us. Be that an executive (governor/president) or a company (apple/google).

    • Congress (or better yet, an Executive Order) needs to be created pronto to enjoin any Contact-Tracing system not being used specifically for tracking criminals on supervised release from collecting, storing, or transmitting information on the user's location.

      No. If it is an Executive order it can quietly be removed at any time by the current or any future President. A law is harder to undo.

  • North Dakota has had 26 less deaths in the first 16 weeks of 2020 than they had for the same period 2016-19 (averaged). The entire USA has an "excess death" rateabout 5.5% (50,331) higher than the 4 year average. As of 2020-05-22 the CDC data has North Carolina missing week 16 for 2020. The rest of the states are complete. In some online discussions some were suggesting using "excess deaths" to see what effect the covid-19 disease is having and I thought that would be a reasonable approach as it gets past
    • Having half the population not doing dangerous things like driving in cars has a massive effect on death rates.
  • So many of you were so gods-be-damned sure: "Oh, no, Apple and Google say it'll be anonymized, no personal information, no GPS tracking, it's totally anonymous!"
    So what's the first thing we hear? That it's using a personally identifiable tracking number and providing GPS data, all of which is being transmitted and stored.
    Seriously, when are you people going to wake the fuck up and stop believing these assholes?

    Wean yourself off smartphones and take back at least a smidgen of your privacy already. You

    • This isn't the Apple/Google collaboration (which has not gone live). This is a ND specific app, written by the lowest bidder. Was the bidder going to monetize all the data to offset the low bid, maybe. But certainly the bidder used 3rd party libraries which were given away so the library authors could monetize the data.

  • If that was all there was to it.

    It's the monetizing of that data.

    How long do you think it will be before you get speeding tickets in the mail from data gathered from your phone?
    All in the name of public safety, right?

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