Ireland’s Covid Tracker smartphone application is sharing information which could lead to location tracking with Google at least every 20 minutes, the Irish Examiner can reveal. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties meanwhile described the newly-revealed data transfers as being “completely opaque - to users and the HSE themselves”. “However, Google Play Services represent a significant component of the app. Google Play Services automatically mandates the aforementioned data transfer as soon as it is enabled. Google meanwhile told the researchers that the sharing of data using Google Play Services is an “industry practice” which can be turned off via a diagnostics setting - however doing so disables the contact tracing function.

Source: Irish Examiner July 21, 2020 15:00 UTC