Coronavirus: why aren’t Singapore residents using the TraceTogether contact-tracing app?

Data privacy is a concern, but the contact-tracing app’s interface is also ‘unexciting’ and a drain on one’s smartphone battery, an analyst says

Authorities are watching the app’s uptake as they come up with measures to ease Singapore’s ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown from June

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While Singapore has many surveillance cameras across the island, the idea of having a tracking system in one’s smartphone ‘hits closer to the bone’, an expert says. Photo: Reuters

Published: 6:45pm, 18 May 2020Updated: 5:52am, 19 May 2020

For Zhu Yong Quan, 25, concerns about his personal data being used by the government for surveillance purposes have stopped him from downloading Singapore’s contact-tracing app to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The final-year student at the National University of Singapore remains wary even though the authorities have outlined the types of data they would collect, and how this would only be used to contact those potentially infected by the Covid-19 disease.

“If I sign up for the app, I am afraid of how it could potentially reveal locations that I have visited, and what it might disclose about my movement,” he said.

Like Zhu, many of Singapore’s 5.6 million residents have held off downloading the TraceTogether app, which was launched at the end of March and leverages short-distance Bluetooth signals between mobile phones to detect other participating users within the vicinity.

About 1.4 million users have downloaded the app but National Development Minister Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs a multi-ministry task force to manage Singapore’s response to the pandemic, has said three-quarters of the population must have the app in order for it to be effective.

Authorities will take into account the adoption of the app as they prepare to roll back lockdown measures when the “circuit breaker” ends on June 1, and this has sparked discussion on whether the app should be made mandatory.

While the government initially said construction workers – the first group allowed to resume activities in June – would have to use the app, it later retracted the statement, saying it was up to employers to establish a tracking system and they could consider using Trace Together.

Coronavirus: why aren’t Singapore residents using the TraceTogether contact-tracing app?

Data privacy is a concern, but the contact-tracing app’s interface is also ‘unexciting’ and a drain on one’s smartphone battery, an analyst says Authorities are watching the app’s uptake as they come up with measures to ease Singapore’s ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown from June

Data privacy is a concern, but the contact-tracing app’s interface is also ‘unexciting’ and a drain on one’s smartphone battery, an analyst says

Authorities are watching the app’s uptake as they come up with measures to ease Singapore’s ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown from June