Experts say AC19, an Iranian government Android app that claims to diagnose coronavirus, is being used to track users' real-time locations
but what it can do is hoover up huge amounts of data on citizens, including names, addresses, dates of birth, and even track people's location in real time. https://www.vice.com/...
VICEDavid Gilbert
Context & Ripple Effects
Iran's AC19 arrives weeks after China launched a close-contact alerting app built on its surveillance network, part of a wave of governments repurposing smartphones for pandemic control that researchers were already flagging amid privacy concerns. What distinguishes AC19 is the gap between its stated purpose — diagnosing coronavirus — and what experts say it actually does: collect names, addresses, dates of birth, and track real-time location.
First-order effects
Iranian citizens who install AC19 hand their identity details and live location directly to the government under the pretense of a health check, with no diagnostic capability offsetting the data exposure.
Second-order effects
The playbook travels: NSO Group was later reported pitching governments COVID-19 contact-tracing tech built on location data from thousands of unsuspecting people, showing vendors commercializing the same health-app-as-surveillance pattern AC19 exemplifies.
Third-order effects
If emergency health apps keep doubling as tracking infrastructure, the durable question shifts to platform gatekeepers like Google — whose store already hosts thousands of data-hungry Android apps per a prior CNET analysis of 17K apps — and whether they police government-published apps differently during crises.
The trend: The pandemic is normalizing state access to citizens' real-time location through official health apps, turning crisis response into standing surveillance infrastructure.
On March 3, the smartphones of millions of Iranian citizens beeped, telling them to download a #coronavirus detection app. It hoovered up huge amounts of data, including their names, addresses, dates of birth, and real-time tracking of their location. https://www.vice.com/...
“They can actually track you. If you move your device from location A to B, they can actually see that in real-time.” @NarimanGharib, a security researcher who analysed the app's code, told me https://www.vice.com/...
In #Iran last week, the Ministry of Health sent a text message to everyone to download an app that would diagnose #coronavirus. Of course the app couldn't do that. Instead it hoovered up location data on millions of citizens and sent it to the government https://www.vice.com/...
The app was developed by the same company the government previously used to build two Telegram clones that were also shown to be monitoring users' communications. https://www.vice.com/...
The app asked a series of YES or No questions about people's symptoms, but it also gather data like name, age, weight, height and, crucially, location https://www.vice.com/...
An app can't tell someone if they have coronavirus—but what it can do is hoover up huge amounts of data on citizens, including names, addresses, dates of birth, and even track people's location in real time. https://www.vice.com/...