Google, Apple Partner Up To Create COVID-19 Exposure Notification System

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — In the race for a cure to COVID-19, two tech giants have teamed up to prevent further spread of the virus.

That's because Apple and Google have announced a partnership to use their phones to pinpoint if their users have come in contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.

"When your phone is near another phone of somebody else's, it is able to create a record of that connection," Alex Hamerstone, a cyber security consultant, said. "Instead of just going by where you are geographically, it is looking to see whose phones are near each other."

Because the phones are recording who users come in contact with as opposed to everywhere you go, Hamerstone says it should ease concerns about privacy, at least a little. But, he says, the safeguards built into the system have limits.

The companies say that information would be shared with public health officials, who would encourage users to get tested, and if positive, to self-quarantine in an effort to prevent them from spreading the virus to others.

Apple and Google say they will initially roll out the program as an app that users would have to download and agree to, and later, plan to incorporate it into an operating system update to increase participation.

The companies have already released draft documentation for the exposure notification system.