So they say.
Even if they don’t, who’s to say the apps’ creators dont have something in there that’s accessible to govt sources.
Just this past week a bunch of apps were pulled off platstore and apples store that no one knew about that were actually malware searching for useful info on peoples phones and tablets. Apps that have been out there for years.
Remember the nsa’s project x-keyscore, intercepting cisco routers and putting in backdoors for accessing traffic.
It would be naive, given what does go on that is known, to simply,believe nothing will happen to this data or that no one collects it. Apple may not, but I would bet it is being collected by someone.
Which apps were those on the Apple App Store? I just did a search for any such app malware on Apple and NOTHING came up since November 2019. Yeah, there was malware found in Google’s Play store, but what are you blithering about in the Apple Store that was pulled due to Apps having malware hiding in them. The 17 apps found back in November , and yes, some of them were long time existing apps, were related to in-App links being CHANGED after the fact to a malware site with a malicious script which then triggered an “ad-clicker” which swiftly visited multiple sites, logging multiple visits to generate revenue for the publisher. They’d gotten around the vetting by making the change after they’d been approved for inclusion in the App Store. The majority of these apps were published in non-American Apple App stores. That publisher was banned for life from ever placing an App on Apple again.
I went through several Apple sites and found nothing being reported. I’ve gone through five pages of Duck,Duck, Go pages of an “iOS malware” search and found nothing for anything since that discovery. Prior to that, there was one in 2018, and then a few in 2016, and then the Chinese Xcode Ghost malware in China which were done by jailbreaking iPhones and side loading App stores using Business App installation methods using direct loading via business iPhone management control methods.
So what are you blithering about in the last week?
Yes, someone could collect and analyze it. But what are they getting? Not much. In actual fact, it might be a good thing for them to get more data about people’s exposure and actual contracture of this disease in real time. . . So long as the data is at arms length and completely anonymized, an ultimate blind study.
That’s what this data generates at the cloud level.
It’s anonymized at the individual device level with a cryptographic key so the owner can reconnect to the data to learn if one of the other cryptographically anonymized persons with which he has had close contact has reported developing COVID19. That’s an active connection to learn that fact, not a passive notification. That’s at both devices that inter-communicate. That data is then individually sent to the cloud.
The only data that could be tracked would be generic, statistical anonymous data, unconnected to any particular person. The purpose is for individuals to make decisions on their own to self-isolate based on accurate data of actual exposure.