For Apple and Android: The new Corona App in the first practice test

"fight Together Corona": this is the Maxim of the evening is from today, Monday, the German Warning App for the two Smartphone platforms is available. Officially, it starts on Tuesday. It was developed by SAP and the German Telekom. The program should keep track of the people with suitably equipped mobile phones near to one another and warn people, if it later turns out that they have lived next to an infected Person for a longer time.

Michael Spehr

editor in the Department "technology and Motor".

Each of us can decide to download the App on his device and can also delete them again. There are no benefits or rewards for App users, and there is no special App-the law which regulates the voluntary nature of the use and prohibition of misuse. Such a law had been demanded by politicians of the Left and the Greens. Employers may not order the use of the App.

We have the App already some time in use, and allows us to connect with the first positive assessments of experts. It runs stably and safely, and charged the battery barely. And Try you can test, however not much, because the application does not aim to interact with that person, but to run in the Background and warn in the event of a fall. The App consists of three components: risk assessment, the recording of meetings, calculation of personal risk of infection (increased, low, unknown risk) and the explanatory help texts.

parts of the App has been tested by the TÜV Informationstechnik in advance, and a positive judgement to be made, even if a vulnerability was found. The developer would have quickly and effectively responded to this vulnerability, said a spokesman for the TÜV Informationstechnik. Since the source code of the App is on the Code-Sharing platform Github publicly, it will come in the coming weeks for discussion of other as yet undiscovered problems, which is, however, a normal process of software development. Anyone who has followed the debates on Github, receives the impression that SAP and Deutsche Telekom resolve any problems quickly and transparently.

The German Corona App is initially an Experiment. No one knows whether or not it succeeds, whether it will secure findings in the follow-up of chains of Infection. It may also be that the method chosen to determine the Smartphone approach is via Bluetooth, is unsuitable. Also could be a result of that too many false-positive alarms, because the longer together does not have to mean with an infected Person, that you get infected yourself.

In any case, this Experiment can only succeed if as many people as possible - and the same Warning App with an identical functional principle of voluntary to charge their devices. Coercion would ensure that government requests are being counteracted. The Warning, the App must meet the highest standards of data protection. This is also a prerequisite for the mass voluntary Installation. So there is in the German App has no continuous detection and tracking with a GPS, no recording of travelled routes and no indication of who was the infected contact.