... being Pinged by the NHS Test and Trace App."

"the very thing it was designed to do."

and if you do happen to get pinged, even if you are double jabbed you'll have to sit at home for days not even able to go out for shopping. Just for possibly being in the same room as someone who has tested positive, even if you show no symptoms. No thanks.

"

Just for possibly being in the same room as someone who has tested positive

"

It's far worse than that.

Just for waiting to cross the road when a bus containing a person who tested positive stopped at that intersection. Or having lunch at a restaurant where a person who tested positive had dinner several hours later (you are registered at having been in the restaurant until 23:59 even if you left at 18:00)

Irrespective of whether analytics data is being stored or not, I can appreciate why many people would want to uninstall the app.

A lot of companies don't have a sick pay scheme. A colleague I work with has been asked to self-isolate three times during the first half of the pandemic, on statutory sick pay each time. She admitted that she was one more self-isolation request away from going bankrupt.

Myself, statutory sick pay is something less than a fifth of what I earn. I have some savings, and could probably negotiate a mortgage holiday with my bank if I needed to, but it would only take a couple of isolation requests to cripple me.

Without some means of supporting isolating people at something close to their normal lifestyle, many of them will do the math and just not install (or uninstall) the app, choosing to take the risk instead. It is just the most pragmatic approach, on the individual level. Only at the society level does it become a terrible idea.

Like many people, I never installed it in the first place.

It would have required at least a single quantum of faith in the Government.

@Pseudononymous coward

Like many people, I never installed it in the first place.

It would have required at least a single quantum of faith in the Government.

In my case (and that of Mrs Commswonk) it would also have required me (us) to get a smartphone.

As we've known since the 80s, there's no such thing as society.

And this is the result.

I am actually surprised they found anyone willing to develop this for such low rates and inside IR35...

The problem wasn't in the development, it was in the requirements.

Requirements gathering is also part of the product development cycle.

This story goes on about "British" people - NHS Scotland use a different app (Protect Scotland https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.scot.covidtracker ), so it's a bit of a weird way to describe it anyway.

"According to a study in Nature earlier this year, the app and resulting self-isolation may have avoided 284,000 cases from its launch on 24 September 2020 to the end of December 2020, during a time when it was used regularly by approximately 16.5 million people or 28 per cent of the total population in Britain."

The number of reported cases in the UK yesterday was 42,000, and cases have been rising for weeks. This app "may" have avoided 284,000 cases in England and Wales in three months (Scotland has a separate app. I am ignorant as to what it done in Northern Ireland). I'm afraid I don't understand how the conclusion has been reached that "it has proved effective".

It's because that's what your Government wants you to believe.

September to December was pre-vaccine; the death toll from cases then would be much higher than the same number of cases now.

Also government being reckless/incompetent/uncaring at the current time does not invalidate the app's utility then.

The Google Play Console available to a developer of an app gives a huge amount of analytical information on apps useage. Especially installs, uninstalls and activity.

Although it wouldn't be able to tell if app active but Bluetooth disabled. That said if you do this the Covid app gives persistent notifications. In which case most people just delete it.

"no idea"

Ah, they old "if we dont ask, then we dont know" answer.

Yeah, they might not know the bluetooth info, though it surely is tracked and if not, why not? But to make the claim they somehow don't know the number of deletions is just remarkable for the sheer cheek of it.

Since I remove my Google account from my device after I finish using Google Play to update or download an app, they would not know about my deletions until the next time I [bother to] log on. If Google Play is smart enough to count the now-missing app as "deleted", that is.

The best way to find out is to ask people i.e. do a survey. Oh look, the Grauniad did one already. Looks like the numbers have gone down by 30%

The likelihood of this happening was obvious before the scheme was launched. Anyone capable of thinking one step beyond "wouldn't it be a good idea" would have thought about what happens beyond a match being identified. Unfortunately that requirement seems to exclude any politician, or at least any minister and their SPADs.

A match on this basis is nothing more than an indication that a chance for an infection has occurred which is very different from saying than an actual infection has occurred. The likely number of false positives would dictate that the next step should be to organise a test to see it it actually occurred.

If the idea had been handed over to someone capable of working that out for themselves it might have been saved. Instead it was handed over to the person who was even less capable of that than the government.

Precisely. At the start, when we didn't know anything about covid-19, self-isolation was a fair enough necessity. 1 and a half years later, it's too blunt a tool. The framework works well, but by now we should be using actual testing to make sure people who are infected stay home, not ask whole swathes of people who likely don't have it to stay home "just in case". In other words, a proper targeted approach is needed.

Nicely put with the potential but not actual infection. I was in Kew Gardens last week and walked past a number of sites where they wanted me to check in. On a sunny and breezy day with not too many people in, what risk did I face of contracting COVID? And if someone that had checked in had a positive test who would have been notified to isolate? The 20 people that just happen to have checked in around the same time or everyone that checked in in at the gardens that day?

Way too blunt an instrument now we have rapid tests etc.

No, it would not have been the 20 or so people who checked in at about the same time. It would have been the (probably) 100's of people who checked in after the infected person for *the rest of that day*.

Because there is no requirement to *check out* of a place, so the app assumes that the infected person remained in a place from the time they checked in until either 23:59 or the time they checked into a different place (if they did).

Of course, if they stayed at a place past midnight, the app would erroneously show them as not present after that time, so people who arrived after midnight would not be pinged.

A match on this basis is nothing more than an indication that a chance for an infection has occurred

Imagine that we had an app that would ping us if we walked past someone that based on all metadata government has on you and that person, you actually missed a change of meeting a life long partner.

Or that the area you were sitting in was next to a place that recruited for a job you always wanted based on the collect chats with your friends and you just missed it.

Imagine the alerts "PAY MORE ATTENTION CITIZEN!"

. . all the Minister's friends and allow them to make bank during a time of crisis.

In that, it has indeed been supremely successful.

As for preventing infections, well given that they don't know who has the app, who's using it and who has uninstalled it, just how reliable do you really think those figures are ?

It just ticked the box of "do something and look busy" and any time you add the word technology in place, it must be good - right ??

I've never had a sensible answer from anyone about how bluetooth distance measurements could be 3D aware. If I'm on the floor above or below you and therefore "in bluetooth range", but well outside of any path that could involve transferring the Virus, then how would it know.

How would it understand the miles of plexiglass that were put in to protect people from each other - for example at the supermarkets and every shop you went into or when you are in a shop and someone is outside sitting on the bench etc. The same thing about being outside - how does it know compared to inside, which is supposed to be worse etc.

As it doesn't understand the real world, it can't give accurate responses and will always over estimate risk.

However, from a Govt. perspective, I guess it made people feel better that "things were being done" and it didn't involve doing a bunch of other harder things.

Personally, I've never installed it and have no plans to do so.

Looking at some of the comments in the Play store it is no wonder people are uninstalling the app. They don't understand how it works at a pretty basic level. I genuinely feel sorry for whoever it is who has to post replies to comments such as these:

"Bluetooth is not needed for anything in the app however if you don't enable the app does not work." - A typical 1 star "review" from someone who seems to think the app runs on fairy dust and moon-beams.

"Sorry I can’t make head nor tail of the NHS COVID-19 app. I don’t understand apps. I’ve tried to download the app and all get is advice on ordering prescriptions." - That's because you've opened a different NHS app which to be fair does look very similar.

"I do not consent to surveillance." - Says someone who's never read a EULA in their life.

"Good but uses battery while on blue tooth" - Waking it up every 5 mins to check the battery level (or your Twitter feed) probably isn't helping.

"Dont install, it's a waste of time. Covid is done and over with." - Tell that to friends and relatives of the 4.06 MILLION people who have died from it so far.

"Annoying as hell that it constantly demands Bluetooth to be turned on, I don't need reminding 5 times a day" - Perhaps a good slapping would work.

And my current favourite:

"I have deleted this since finding out you can fake it to get a isolation alert all you have to do is tick one of the boxes of symptoms I tried it and got the alert straight away twice, I do not have any of the symptoms, so how many people will be saying they have an alert when not true" - Thanks to you, probably everyone you've been in close contact with recently.

If it is your job to respond to people like this then you are one of the unsung NHS heroes. I could not do your job.