Good news is that the tech arm of the Singapore government GovTech has just created a nifty new app call TraceTogether that aims to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus through community-driven contact tracing.
If you wish to give it a try, then you can download it on App Store and Google Play.
But How Does it works?
According to GovTech, the app makes use of the phone’s Bluetooth signals to detect other TraceTogether phones, estimate the distance and duration of these encounters. The records are encrypted and stored locally on the user’s phone for 21 days which is the estimated maximum incubation period of the virus.
If you’re worried about my privacy then you need to be relax. The GovTech claims that data is not shared in any way until when required by the Ministry of Health (MOH) for contact tracing purposes. Only the user can authorise the uploading his/her TraceTogether data to MOH, after which the data will be deciphered to get mobile numbers of the user’s close contacts within a period of time.
Here is a simple video showing you on how it works
So make sure you share this out! The app will only become more effective when more users install the app and leave their Bluetooth function turned on since it is after all a community-driven effort.
