Overview
I found it interesting that Apple and Google collaborated to create a contact tracing app. When they shared their plans, I thought I should sketch it out to better understand how it was meant to work.
Contact Tracing Diagram
The diagram shows that there’s a Central server to capture ids.
The app that will run on the users phones will generate a Rotating ID every 15 minutes. The generated id is advertised on a bluetooth service, which is collected by other users’s devices. The users device will be doing the same: collecting rotating IDs from other users’s apps as the user and their phone move through the world.
A clever design meant to notify potential exposure, while at the same time protecting everyone's identity .
When a user receives a positive diagnosis, the IDs that they’ve captured (and generated?) for the days that they were potentially contagious, is transmitted to a central server. The users of these IDs will be notified that someone whose path they crossed with has come down with COVID-19.
Review
It’s worth seeing how useful this has proven to be.