Those who have updated their warning app will often see fewer risk contacts in one fell swoop. That causes criticism - even if there is actually an important innovation behind it.
Where yesterday there were warnings about several potentially dangerous contacts, today there is suddenly “no risk encounters”. Numerous iPhone users are likely to have had this experience when they looked at their Corona warning app after a current update.
The background is version 1.9.1 of the warning app, which has been available on iOS since Wednesday evening. With the update, SAP and Deutsche Telekom have adjusted and refined the risk calculation within the app they developed . If a user tests positive for the coronavirus, the app calculates the risk of infection for all other users who have previously met the infected person.
SPIEGEL was able to understand for several devices that the number of low-risk encounters, highlighted in green in the app, fell from a handful to zero after the warning app was updated. On Twitter , users also report that red risk contacts - i.e. encounters with a high risk of infection - have turned into green risk contacts.
Users are not informed about the reason for the sudden decrease in their risk contacts in the app. Only a general, technical sentence in the App Store indicates the change in the risk calculation. It says that "the app has been converted to version 2.0 of the Exposure Notification Framework (ENF) provided by Apple".
Warn-App now uses an update that has been available since summer
What is meant is a framework program made available by Apple and Google that uses the warning app to calculate risk. This framework program was made available in an improved version by Apple and Google at the end of July. This updated version of the framework, which among other things is intended to improve the Bluetooth calibration of many devices used for distance measurement, has only now been adopted for the warning app with the current update.
For users who are not familiar with the details of the warning app, it should not be clear what this means. Accordingly, the computer scientist Henning Tillmann criticized on Twitter that the innovations “are not clearly communicated in the app.” The update creates unnecessary confusion, which could have been avoided with a pop-up in the app, for example.
So far, the update can only be installed on iOS devices, but will soon also be available on Android devices. The warning app is gradually updated automatically, but it can also be brought up to date manually as an update via the App Store.
More information about the timing of risk contacts
With the update to version 1.9.1. some bugs should also be fixed and texts updated. What is also new is that in the case of red risk contacts, it should be displayed on which day and on how many days such contacts with an increased risk took place. This could help users to better assess their risk of infection.
In addition, the function has been revised, with which users can share their results with the app after a positive corona test. Because not everyone has done this so far, not all other users who the infected person has encountered can be warned by the app.