Dutch government pauses Covid-19 app over data leak fears

The Dutch government has temporarily disabled its coronavirus warning app amid data privacy concerns for people who have the app installed on phones using the Android operating system.
Health Minister Hugo de Jonge announced late Wednesday that the CoronaMelder app will stop sending warnings for 48 hours while the government checks if users' data is secure.
The Dutch app uses “exposure notification” technology developed by Google and Apple that generates random codes that can be exchanged by phones whose users are close to one another for long enough to possibly transmit the virus.
The Dutch health ministry says that it is possible for other apps on Android phones to access data about whether its user's had been infected and its contacts with other phones.
“The privacy of users is always a priority. While Google must solve the problem, I can limit the consequences. That’s why we’re taking this decision,” De Jonge said in a statement.
Most EU nations have designed contact tracing apps around the same technology, the European Commission said. The Commission said that it has informed controllers of national apps in the 27-nation EU “so that Member States take the necessary steps if necessary.”
According to the Dutch health ministry, Google informed the government Wednesday it has fixed the issue. The government halted messages from the app for 48 hours to check if the leak has been fixed.
In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, Google said it has been “rolling out a fix for an issue where random Bluetooth identifiers used by the Exposure Notification framework on Android were temporarily accessible to a limited number of pre-installed applications.”
The tech giant said that the rollout began several weeks ago and it expects the fix "to be available to all Android users in the coming days.”
Google said that random Bluetooth identifiers “on their own have no practical value to bad actors, and it is extremely unlikely that developers of pre-installed apps were aware of the inadvertent availability of those identifiers.”
The company added that it has no indications that any data from coronavirus exposure apps was accessed inappropriately.
-
First special business flight with over 100 Indian traders lands in China
A special flight with 107 Indian traders landed in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Tuesday, carrying many who were stuck in India since 2020 despite business interests in China because of the restrictions imposed by Beijing on international travel to contain Covid-19. This particular group of Indian merchants boarded the special China Southern Airlines flight from New Delhi and landed in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, on Tuesday.
-
Mexican President proposes peace commission led by 3 leaders including PM Modi
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is planning to submit a written proposal to the UN to create a commission, made up of three world leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to promote a world truce for a period of five years, MSN web portal reported. The Mexican President proposed that the top commission should include Pope Francis, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and Indian PM Narendra Modi.
-
In major policy shift, China says it will take Taiwan by force if necessary
China on Wednesday, in only its third white paper on Taiwan since 1993 and the first after President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, said it will not “renounce” the use of military force to bring the self-governed island under its control as its armed forces concluded the largest ever exercises around the island but announced that it will conduct regular patrols in the region.
-
New zoonotic virus found in China, 35 known cases of infection: Study
A new animal origin virus, which could infect humans, has been discovered in two provinces in China, scientists from China and Singapore have said in a new study. At least 35 such cases have been recorded in eastern China's Shandong province and central China's Henan province, said the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on August 4.
-
On the Taiwan question: China refuses rule out use of force in reunification bid
China on Wednesday, in its first white paper on Taiwan since President Xi Jinping came to power, said it will not “renounce” the use of military force to bring the self-governed island under its control, reiterating the threat to use force as its armed forces continued to hold the largest ever exercises around the island. Beijing hasn't announced when the current series of drills will end.