Articles
Italy COVID-19 Mobile Application
What is Immuni?
Immuni is an app created to help us fight epidemics, starting with COVID-19.
The app has a contact tracing feature. When users discover they have tested positive for the virus, Immuni allows them to anonymously alert people they have been in close contact with and who may also have been infected. By being informed promptly (potentially even before developing symptoms of the virus), these people can contact their general practitioner to discuss their situation. Doing so can prevent them from infecting others, helping to reduce the spread of the virus.
How does Immuni contact tracing system work?
Immuni informs users that they have been in close contact with a person who has tested positive by sending them an alert that includes advice on how to deal with the situation.
Immuni can determine that a risky exposure has taken place between two users without knowing who those users are and where they met. The app doesn’t (and can’t) collect any data that would identify the user, such as their name, date of birth, address, telephone number, or email address. To determine the contact, Immuni uses Bluetooth Low Energy technology and does not use geolocation data of any kind, including GPS data.
Here is a simplified explanation of how the system works. Let’s consider the example of two hypothetical users, Alice and Marco:
When Immuni is installed on their smartphones, it emits a Bluetooth signal that includes a random code. It does this on a continuous basis. When Alice approaches Marco, their smartphones exchange these codes and store them in their memory, thus making note of that contact. They also record how long the contact lasted and the strength of the Bluetooth signal received, an approximate indicator of the distance between Alice’s and Marco’s smartphones.
The codes are generated randomly, and they don’t contain any information about the user or their device. The codes also change several times every hour, protecting user privacy even more. It’s not possible to trace the identity of the user from their random codes.
Let’s suppose that Marco later tests positive for the virus. With the help of the healthcare worker who notified him of his positive test result, Marco is able to report this result to Immuni, sharing his random codes and alerting the people he has been in close contact with.
For every user, the app regularly downloads the random codes shared by users who have tested positive for the virus. By doing so, it can check if any of these codes correspond with those recorded in previous days. In our example, Alice’s app will find Marco’s random code. It will check the length and the distance of the contact to evaluate the risk of infection, and, if necessary, it will notify Alice.
How is my privacy protected?
In developing Immuni, we have taken many measures to protect you and your privacy. Here’s a list of some of these measures:
- The app doesn’t collect any data that could enable your identity to be traced. It doesn’t ask for (and can’t obtain) information such as your name, surname, date of birth, address, telephone number, or email address.
- Your movements aren’t tracked or traceable in any shape or form.
- The random codes that smartphones exchange via Bluetooth don’t contain information about you or your device.
- These random codes change several times every hour, protecting your privacy even further.
- The data saved on your smartphone and the connections between the app and the server are encrypted.
- All data, whether stored on the device or on the server, is deleted when no longer relevant, and certainly no later than December 31, 2021.
- The Ministry of Health is the body that collects your data. The data is used solely with the aim of containing the COVID-19 epidemic or for scientific research.
- The data is saved on servers in Italy and managed by public bodies.
Share & save data
Immuni’s sole purpose is to help cope with the epidemic. The project is not for profit, and in no case will your data be sold or used for any commercial purpose, including profiling for advertising purposes.
The data is under the care of the Ministry of Health. Any sharing of the information collected is strictly for the purpose of scientific research, and only after its complete anonymisation and aggregation.
Language
The languages currently supported are Italian, English, German, French, and Spanish. The app uses the same language that’s set on your smartphone, where available. Otherwise, it uses English. Therefore, to change the language of the app, you’ll need to change the language of your device.
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