Exposure Notifications: Using technology to help public health authorities fight COVID‑19
Google and Apple jointly created the Exposure Notifications System out of a shared sense of responsibility to help governments and our global community fight this pandemic through contact tracing.
Overview
The benefits of contact tracing
Contact tracing is a technique used by public health authorities to contact and give guidance to anyone who may have been exposed to a person who has contracted COVID-19. This technique will be an essential part of transitioning back to daily life while managing the risk of further outbreaks.
How Exposure Notifications can help
Traditional methods of contact tracing are critical to containing the spread of infection. Technology can support and augment these efforts by allowing public health authorities to quickly notify people who may have been exposed to a person who has contracted COVID-19, including those the person might not know directly. This starts with Exposure Notifications on your smartphone. These will help your public health authority alert you if you’ve been exposed to COVID-19.
On Android, you can find the app for your area, if available, on Google Play.
If you have an iPhone, opt-in to Exposure Notifications in your device settings (coming soon).
Designed to protect your privacy
We understand that the success of this approach depends on people feeling confident that their private information is protected. The Exposure Notifications System was built with your privacy and security central to the design. Your identity is not shared with other users, Google, or Apple.
Learn more
How this technology works
Public health authorities around the world are building apps that use the Exposure Notifications System to help their contact tracing efforts. On Android, you can find the app for your area, if available, on Google Play. Android users will also receive a notification from the Play Store, if their state has made Exposure Notifications available.
If you have an iPhone, opt-in to Exposure Notifications in your device settings (coming soon).
Once you opt-in to the notification system, the Exposure Notifications System will generate a random ID for your device. To help ensure these random IDs can’t be used to identify you or your location, they change every 10-20 minutes.
Your phone and the phones around you will work in the background to exchange these privacy-preserving random IDs via Bluetooth. You do not need to have the app open for this process to take place.
Your phone periodically checks all the random IDs associated with positive COVID-19 cases against its own list.
If there’s a match, you will receive a COVID-19 exposure notification, with further instructions from your public health authority on how to keep you and the people around you safe.
Exposure Notifications and your privacy
We understand how important your privacy is. Here’s how we’ve built this system to respect your privacy and keep you in control.
You control whether you receive Exposure Notifications
The Exposure Notifications System doesn’t track your location
Neither Google, Apple, nor other users can see your identity
