[aboringusername]

Honestly, to me I feel the entire concept of 'apps' has been an abysmal failure. There's no evidence to suggest they've helped in any capacity. I think any contact tracing system is far more effective than using BT which was never designed to be used in such a capacity and feels more of a best-case 'hack' with current smartphone technology.

History will look at these 'apps' and will make conclusions based on their effectiveness, and the ones that are more privacy preserving will likely not rate highly on impact or usefulness.

If anything, this pandemic has enabled authoritarian regimes the capability of monitoring their populous 24/7 with wearable gadgets and apps that collect location/contact and other information.

To me, it highlights the importance of not using apps where possible and further highlighting how smartphones are spies for the governments around the world.

[rsynnott]

This data is intended to be used in concert with manual contact tracing, not instead of it. The problem with contact tracing, as people get more mobile, is that while you can say "I was in contact with my friend X" you probably can't tell the contact tracer the name of the person sitting behind you in the restaurant. This will help with that, potentially.

[devit]

The problem is that they are currently not mandatory (at least in most countries).

I think Apple and Google should make contact tracing built-in and on by default, plus ideally there should be enforcement of activation by all places that require to pass a thermal scanner to enter.

The Apple/Google protocol is privacy preserving, so there is no "spy" concern.