The time has come. The official Corona warning app is ready and can be downloaded voluntarily by any interested user. We’ll show you how to keep the app under control.
Together with Google, Apple developed an interface for contact tracking that was introduced with iOS 13.5. Your iPhone exchanges random IDs with other devices via Bluetooth. If a contact person is infected with COVID-19, an authorized app can inform you about it. The German Corona Warning app is now also available for download in the App Store.
What does the Corona warning app actually do?
Basically, the new application is used to track contacts so that chains of infection can be traced. This is usually done via Bluetooth and thanks to the close cooperation between Apple and Google, it also works across platforms between iOS and Android devices. Location data should not be recorded. Rather, the devices exchange anonymously IDs with one another. If a contact person is infected, you can report this and all persons in the contact chain are informed that you came into contact with an infected person. According to the Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn, this should be completely anonymous.
This way you can prevent tracking afterwards
If you do not want your contacts to be saved anonymously on your device, you can deactivate the contact log in “Settings> Data protection> Bluetooth> COVID-19 contact log”, view apps used, check contacts and also delete your previous contact log. Basically, the function only becomes active when you have installed an authorized app on your iPhone and you still have full control over your data.
Since the data is anonymized anyway and Apple developed the interface together with Google in order to be able to control the actual access, installing the app is safe and of course also useful for people who travel a lot.