Singapore to open-source national coronavirus encounter-tracing app and the Bluetooth research behind it

Singapore plans to open source a smartphone app its digital government team has developed to track citizens' encounters with coronavirus carriers.

The app, named TraceTogether, and its government is urging citizens to run so that if they encounter a Coronavirus carrier, it’s easier to trace who else may have been exposed to the virus. With that info in hand, health authorities are better-informed about who needs to go into quarantine and can focus their resources on those who most need assistance.

The app is opt-in and doesn’t track users through space, instead recording who you have encountered. To do so, it requires Bluetooth and location services to be turned on when another phone running the app comes into range exchanges four nuggets of information - a timestamp, Bluetooth signal strength, the phone’s model, and a temporary identifier or device nickname. While location services are required, the app doesn't track users, instead helping to calculate distances between them.

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Source: The Register, 26 March 2020