iPhones still a major issue with Australian COVIDSafe contact tracing app

The operation of the COVIDSafe app on iPhone is a big problem but help is imminent to fix it.

Federal MPs, Angie Bell, Stuart Robert and Karen Andrews hold up the COVIDSafe app. Picture: Jerad Williams

The operation of the COVIDSafe app on iPhone is a big problem but help is imminent to fix it.

There is unresolved concern that on iPhones, users must remember to have the app open and preferably in the foreground on the screen for it to communicate with the handset’s Bluetooth and successfully record and store the encrypted IDs of nearby phones. For many, that will be a big ask.

This usability impacts a big slice of the Australian handset market. A study by Telsyte published in February put Apple’s share of the Australian market at 42.2pc.

Resolving this problem is hence key to ensuring that COVIDSafe properly records a person’s contacts and that a large slab of the country’s contact data is not missed.

The government’s approach so far has been to send push notifications to users reminding them to keep the app open, but it’s likely that many will either find this a nuisance, forget to do it, or be unaware that they have inadvertently closed the app.

This had been a major issue with Singapore’s TraceTogether app, before the Australian government adapted Singapore’s open source code for its own use.

It was also of concern to software engineers and Apple which in mid March formed a team to work on “Project Bubble” with dozens of employees conscripted to look at contact tracing.

It was formed under senior vice president Craig Federighi and company COO Jeff Williams, according to a detailed write up of the project by CNBC.

The CNBC story says that by month’s end Google had joined forces with Apple to produce changes to both their operating systems which included API’s or application programming Interfaces that would let government developed health applications run more smoothly and use less battery.

Significantly, CNBC reports that the project is due to be launched late this week, not in mid or late May as previously indicated at a briefing.

“The software, which Apple and Google now refer to by the softer-sounding term ‘exposure notification’ instead of “contact tracing,” is due to be released on May 1,” says the CNBC report.

UPDATED: Apple and Google representatives later said they were sending the first seeds of the exposure notification API to selected developers associated with public health authorities (PHAs) around the world. They said this was intended to help developers begin testing in anticipation of the API’s release in mid-May. Additional details would be announced on Friday (US time).

The report by CNBC shows that the issue of the app not working on iPhones unless open was “a big usability problem”.

“On an iPhone, the app had to be running all the time in the foreground, or it stopped working. That meant that phones needed to remain unlocked -- a nightmare scenario if they got stolen — and burned through battery life quickly,” says the CNBC report.

Having gone with the TraceTogether approach, the Australian government is not explicitly using the Apple and Google solution to contract tracing and it is not clear whether the operating system updates to make the API available to the Australian Government will be pushed to users’ phones in Australia.

The companies told technology media earlier this month that the API’s could be rolled out on a region by region basis.

Therefore, it is unclear whether the Australian Government will have access to the API’s and if they do, whether a software push on May 1, if it happens as reported, will be available to the COVIDSafe app developers.

Department of Health chief information officer Daniel Keys was asked at a media conference on Monday (April 27) whether the Apple Google push meant that Australian iPhone users wouldn't need the app open in the background.

“It's unclear at this stage, so we're working with Apple and Google on their functionality to ensure that it can be consumed by the app to improve the app's performance,” he told the media.

Meanwhile, there remains confusion as to whether COVIDSafe also operates properly by running in the background on iPhones and when handsets are locked.

The end solution would be for the app to be “set and forget” after being installed on both iOS and Android.

Other teething problems remain. Some users complain they cannot register their phone numbers in the COVIDSafe app. The usual solution has been to register again when there is less peak demand online late at night or early in the morning.

We’ve ticked past 3️⃣ million registrations of the COVIDSafe App

3m in 3 days is a great result, but there’s work to be done to protect our doctors & nurses, & help us get back to the life we love

Haven’t registered yet? Make it your Wed night mission https://t.co/vn3NoeQpal pic.twitter.com/zZtSVFZHpn

— Greg Hunt (@GregHuntMP) April 29, 2020

Some users cannot install the app because their phones are too old. The app requires iPhones to have iOS 10.0 or later, and Android phones need Google Android 6.0 or later. Not all phones can run these operating system versions. Some Australians simply don’t have smartphones.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Greg Hunt has revealed that Australians have downloaded the COVIDSafe app more than three million times in three days. It suggests the take up of the app is off to a great start with the government aiming for a 40 per cent adoption or roughly up to 10 million users for it to be maximally effective.

The app uses the phone’s Bluetooth signal to scan for the app on other nearby phones and records a person’s contacts for the past 21 days in encrypted form on the phone.

Data is stored solely on phones however a user can agree to upload their contacts should they test positive to COVID-19.

The app gives human contract tracers a head start in finding other people at risk of contracting the disease and urging them to be tested, and hence reduces the time period and opportunities for these fresh contacts to infect others, if they too are COVID-19 positive.

The iPhone usability issue is the biggest obstacle to COVIDSafe’s operation with a consensus forming that while the government’s centralised approach to managing app data isn’t ideal, it’s workable security wise.

Reverse engineering of the COVIDSafe app suggests that any concerns about the app’s operation security wise are insufficient to outweigh the good the app can do in helping health workers trace the contacts of people who test positive to COVID-19.

That one friend who won't download the COVIDSafe app. pic.twitter.com/sxOp7MD51G

— Michael Shafar (@michaelshafar) April 27, 2020

An analysis by QTEAM published Thursday in The Australian says: “With the caveat of working only with a decompiled code base rather than full source code, we could find no significant security flaws, no GPS and location tracking or unexpected server communication within the application and no behaviours significantly outside the stated purpose of this contact tracing application.”

So the problem really is iPhone usability.