Massachusetts’ COVID-19 publicity notification app auto-installed on Android telephones

Google seems to have mechanically put in the COVID-19 publicity notification app for Massachusetts on some Android telephones, customers reported. The system remains to be solely lively if customers flip it on, Google told 9to5Google.

The app, MassNotify, launched on June fifteenth. Many Android customers mentioned that it was silently put in on their telephones with none notifications: “Ghost installed on my phone without my consent. While I believe in what this app was meant to do, installing it without so much as a notification is extremely alarming,” one person wrote in a Google Play Store review.

The function was “automatically distributed,” Google mentioned in an announcement to 9to5Google, however customers nonetheless should actively choose in to ship and obtain publicity notifications.

MassNotify makes use of Google and Apple’s Bluetooth-based system to let customers who check optimistic for COVID-19 alert strangers whose telephones have been close by that they might have been uncovered to the virus. It was constructed utilizing the Exposure Notifications Express program, which permits states to sidestep the laborious strategy of constructing their very own app. Instead, their well being departments can specify how and when somebody ought to obtain an alert a few doable publicity, and the businesses generate the software program.

On Android telephones, that specific course of mechanically creates a customized app for a state. It’s speculated to then alert Android customers within the state that an utility is offered that they’ll obtain and set up. In this case, customers mentioned that it was downloaded mechanically with out getting that discover.

Massachusetts is the twenty ninth state to debut an app utilizing the Google and Apple publicity notification device. Around 500,000 residents signed up within the first two days after its launch.