An update to England and Wales’ contact-tracing app has been blocked by Apple and Google for violating their location data collection rules.
When gyms, pub gardens, and non-essential shops reopened today, the COVID-19 app was supposed to have a new feature that would log every place that a user checked into. If they later tested positive, the app would inform other people who’d been to that venue.
But this collection of location data is prohibited by Apple and Google, who developed the decentralized API model on which the app is based. The update has therefore been blocked from Google Play and the App Store.
