CWA shall not indicate how long it has been installed or active to make discrimination in physical access control situations impossible

[jkrwdf]

Current Implementation

Both apps (iOS and Android) display a number of days how long tracing is (according to the internal knowledge of the app) already active (for example "13 of 14 days").

Suggested Enhancement

I suggest to drop this information completely.

Expected Benefits

I consider this feature not only as problematic regarding its implementation (see bugs regarding "13 of 14" or "15 of 14"), but also from an ethical perspective.

Although politics made clear that the CWA shall never be used as a kind of "Access Control Mechanism" to locations/events, as there is no law so far, it cannot be prevented.

If it then happens, this type of information might be used as a further discriminating factor ("You are not using the CWA for long enough").

None of the other COVID-19 apps I know (Imnuni, SwissCovid) have such information and just indicate "Tracing on / Tracing off".

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Internal Tracking Id: EXPOSUREAPP-2078

Related tickets: EXPOSUREAPP-5170 Android Planned fix 1.15 EXPOSUREAPP-5270 iOS Planned fix 1.15 EXPOSUREAPP-4524 Android 1.15

[ghost]

Hello,

I want to add to this issue. Many of my friends and family ask me about the 14 out of 14 days active that are displayed. Some expected that the counter would go further ( 15/14, 16/14, etc) up or were unsure if the app is still working. This seems not the be a uncommon thing, as I ask a couple of users ( n > 50 ) for feedback.

Edit: Just to update on that, here is another user complaining

[jkrwdf]

In https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-app-ios/issues/853#issuecomment-653886108 I found a statement that this feature is explicitly requested by RKI:

Unfortunately, the RKI insists on this feature so we cannot remove it.

So my concerns regarding this feature in general would need to be considered at this level.

[ghost]

If so, we need to adjust the phrase. 5/14 til measurements are meaningful/significant would be one idea. This is really dropping the adoption rate!

[SonaliDK]

Dear @jkrwdf,

thank you very much for your proposal.

To give the community a space for discussing new feature ideas or enhancements that might not be taken up immediately by the development teams, we created the cwa-wishlist repository.

This idea is one of these feature ideas or enhancements. Consequently, we will move this issue to this repository and allow the community and you to further refine it, discuss pros and cons, and evaluate alternatives.

The issue will not be closed in this repository to ensure long-term visibility. All issues in the cwa-wishlist repository will be discussed with our contracting entities. They will decide whether they will be implemented or pursued further. As soon as we have any updates, we will let you know about the details.

Best regards,

SD

Corona-Warn-App Open Source Team

[MikeMcC399]

Related to this request, CWA Android since V1.1.1 shows risk_card_body_saved_days_full "Exposure logging permanently active" instead of "Exposure logging was active for 14 of the past 14 days.".

[jkrwdf]

That's only a UIchange on the initial screen. If you tap the arrow icon in the top right corner of the green box, and scroll down, you still see the 14 of 14 in the free text. The core of my request is that counting overall stops, not that it is hidden.

[ghost]

Hello @jkrwdf,

this has been implemented!

thanks, LMM

Corona-Warn-App Open Source Team

[daimpi]

@GPclips

this has been implemented!

Nice, thanks for the update! 🙂

For which CWA version is this change currently targeted?

[ghost]

Hello community,

since this seems to still occur, I will reopen this issue and check with the development team.

Thanks, LMM

Corona-Warn-App Open Source Team

[Ein-Tim]

@GPclips but it is planed to drop the number of the active days, isn‘t it?

[Ein-Tim]

And update if this now got implemented or not or if its planed to drop the number?

[daimpi]

Over at https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-app-ios/issues/1379#issuecomment-780604194 @dsarkar writes:

There are currently internal discussions on how to change the information of active days on the card: It might be dropped and/or replaced by another message (e.g. days since installation). There are several reasons to do so, just to mention some:

• This issue here e.g.: can't be fixed by dev team, since this is an Apple issue how backups are handled

  • We have also the issue being stucked at 13/14 days on some iOS devices

  • How shall period of times with BT off, phone off, wifi/data off be handled ?

  • Android phones e.g. it is apparently not trivial to figure out BT off time.

  • the grey card actually was dropped in the meantime.

So altogether, with all these issues it is actually not very clear, what " n/14 active days" means exactly and there are (too) many ways how one could possibly define and interpret this number, leading amongst some users apparently more to confusion than adding additional useful information. So, we might expect to see some changes here anyway in one of the future releases.

[MikeMcC399]

@daimpi The true measurement of how long exposure logging has been active can only be accurately assessed by the Exposure Notifications Framework / System. That would mean a change to the API if Google / Apple decided to enhance the functionality to include this information. It's the ENF/ENS which knows how many 5 minute intervals it has been actively sending out Bluetooth beacons and it could count these intervals and store them for the previous 14 days.

I agree anyway that the current display is often inaccurate!

[dsarkar]

Related tickets: EXPOSUREAPP-5170 Android Planned fix 1.15 EXPOSUREAPP-5270 iOS Planned fix 1.15

[Ein-Tim]

@dsarkar

Could you let us know how they'll fix this? Will they drop the number of active days or try to make the count more reliable?

[dsarkar]

@Ein-Tim Will come back to you with more info hopefully soon.

[dsarkar]

@Ein-Tim here is your answer! https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-app-android/pull/2464/files#diff-9405ea10e9e63f43bbd5b890ed759629f402c1933fbd70a38d55ca2f07f85e1b ;-)

[Ein-Tim]

@dsarkar Thank you! (:

[dsarkar]

@Ein-Tim This will actually solve several issues as mentioned before (BT off, phone off, wifi/data off, stuck at 13/14, reinstall, reset, restore from backup...)

[Ein-Tim]

iOS PR: https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-app-ios/pull/2132

[Ein-Tim]

This has been introduced with version 1.15.1, which has been released to GitHub and will be available to all users in the next 24h. Instead of the active days, the app shows since when it is installed, but only in the first 14 days. Afterwards, the app doesn't show any active days/days since installation at all.

Blog post: https://www.coronawarn.app/en/blog/2021-03-24-corona-warn-app-version-1-15/

[jkrwdf]

This change successfully addresses the technical issues around the attempt to "count the days where tracing worked".

It does not address the situation I described initially. Denial of physical access to a venue because of too little use of the CWA is independent of whether the App shows "Active for 3 days" or "Installed 21. March 2021" (with current day 24. March 2021).

[dsarkar]

@jkrwdf So you would like to suggest to drop "Numbers of days installed" completely? If that is the case, please, adjust the title and then I will create a new internal ticket for your request. Thanks, DS

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Corona-Warn-App Open Source Team

[jkrwdf]

As suggested, I updated the title from

Drop display of "Number of Active Days" completely

to

CWA shall not indicate how long it has been installed or active to make discrimination in physical access control situations impossible

to sharpen the core idea of this issue.