Iran's coronavirus 'detection' app is spying on public
As the outbreak of coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in Iran, the government of the country is reportedly exploiting the situation to its own advantage. According to a report in VICE, the government has launched an app that claims to offer a way to detect the infectious COVID-19 disease but is actually spying on the general public. Here's all you need to know.
AC19 app to diagnose coronavirus infection
The Iran government-backed app, AC19, promises to be a tool that the public could use to check if they have been infected by the novel coronavirus. However, in reality, that is just a front; VICE reports that the app works like a surveillance tool, which steals the real-time location of users and sends it back to the government's servers.
People don't get they are giving away their location
The sneaky nature of the AC19 app makes it even more dangerous. Basically, the permission to mine location data appears in English, not Farsi, which keeps the public from understanding what they are opting into. Also, 40% of the devices in use there are very old, meaning no permission pop-up appears, and the location is shared directly, without any sign or alert.
With this, they could track every movement of citizens
A security expert analyzed the app and claimed that it's similar to fitness-tracking apps that show your precise movement from one place to another. "Collecting location data is not a one-off thing," Nariman Gharib, a security researcher told VICE, pointing out, "They can actually track you. If you move your device from location A to B, they can actually see that in real-time."
No word on what Iran is doing with this data
There's no word on what the Iranian Government is doing by tricking its people into giving away their real-time location. However, considering that the country is infamous for silencing dissent, this data could easily be used to track down people who may be speaking up, revealing the nation's poor management of the outbreak. So far, over 600 have died from COVID-19 in Iran.
