• Characters.Tiago, the university student who graduated sneaking papers written by a robot
  • Money. These famous apps for iPhone and Android "pluck" your bank account without you noticing

The Government's official mobile application of "self-evaluation" and "monitoring" for possible infections of Coronavirus in national territory is called Assistance COVID-19 and is available to download for free for Android phones and iPhone in their respective application stores.

The publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE) of the information related to this application has revealed the details of its development and operation.

As the text itself explains, this application arises with the aim of "reducing the volume of calls to the telephone numbers that have been made available to citizens" and to "allow an initial triage of possible cases and subsequent monitoring ".

However, they clearly warn that the app "does not constitute a service for medical diagnosis, emergency care or the prescription of pharmacological treatments. The use of the Application cannot under any circumstances replace personal face-to-face consultation with a duly medical professional qualified . "

To do this, the application collects a series of personal data from users such as "name and surname, mobile phone number , ID , full address and postal code, date of birth and gender."

Location permissions

In addition, the application also allows "geolocating the user using geolocation information via GPS available on their mobile phone."

However, on this aspect, the Official State Gazette (BOE) specifies that "Such geolocation will only be used at the time [of] users' registration, as well as when they carry out their self-evaluations, in order to know in which Autonomous Community they are find and be able to connect them with the health care system that corresponds to them ".

The latest version of the app present in the app stores (1.0.7) requires "location" permissions to "access the exact location only in the foreground" and "access the approximate location (from the network ) only in the foreground. " That is, it would not provide this data if the application is closed or in the background.

In addition, in the specifications of the application within your store, there is a category of permissions under the heading of "others" which details "have full access to the network, see network connections , APIS Install Referrer of Play, see Wi-Fi connections and receive internet data. "

In the BOE it is explained that the application also collects " health data of users , including, among other symptoms such as dry cough, fever higher than 37.5º, shortness of breath, previous pathologies, if you have been in contact with any patient confirmed positive for COVID-19, runny nose, muscle pain and / or general malaise. "

Likewise, the BOE indicates that " usage data and user interactions with the application " will be collected , without going into details about this aspect.

The government application is an initiative of the General Secretariat for Digital Administration , under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation. Its execution has been carried out using the formula of the agreement with Telefónica, which has subcontracted its development to the Spanish subsidiary of CartoDB, Medensaltren and Tritium Software.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • iPhone
  • Telefónica

MoneyThese famous apps for iPhone and Android "pluck" your bank account without you noticing

Google They discover an espionage plot on Android that uses apps from their official store

Covid-19Apple and Google join forces so you know if you've been around someone with coronavirus