This COVID-19 Contact Tracing App Uses Bluetooth, Won’t Log Your Location

This COVID-19 Contact Tracing App Uses Bluetooth, Won’t Log Your Location
Detail of the Bluetooth button of an audio system in Mexico City on Dec. 6, 2018. OMAR TORRES/AFP via Getty Images
|Updated:

Australia’s federal government has announced plans to introduce a contact tracing mobile app to help curb COVID-19’s spread across the country.

However, rather than collecting location data directly from mobile operators, the proposed TraceTogether app will use Bluetooth technology to sense whether users who have voluntarily opted-in have come within nine metres of one another.