Data donation app to find out how many people are infected with the corona virus is actually not a good idea. The so called vital data such as blood pressure are collected with the help of fitness trackers. Critics criticize the lack of anonymity of the data.
If you take a closer look, you can see that it is not at all clear who will receive the data, how long the data will be kept, and how you can possibly revoke it, so that you will no longer be part of this unintelligible research. Because at the moment nobody knows how many people are really infected with the Corona virus. Many people do not show any symptoms after the infection, others consider it a harmless cold. That is why the critics now want to evaluate the vital data of citizens. Fitness trackers collect exactly such vital data, and these vital values change in the event of an acute illness.
Data Protection App Not Yet Checked
Something went wrong with this app. According to the technical service provider for the Corona data donation app, the separation of the app from Apple Health did not work reliably in individual cases. With the upcoming update of the app, an additional note will be integrated as to how the users can withdraw the data release. The data protection officer has been informed about the problem with the withdrawal of data sharing in Apple Health in older versions of the app and has received corresponding documentation.
This is not possible for all of us, because the source code is not open and nothing else is known about the internal structures of this software. Therefore, it has to be trusted. And we really only know whether this trust was justified at this point if you take a closer look. The society for computer science did not do that, but just pointed out early on that trust in real useful apps, which could then contain the infections, should not be undermined by such data donation apps.
