TousAntiCovid was useless during the pandemic (but that’s not a surprise)

The covid-19 pandemic has allowed many things to become part of our daily lives, from surgical masks to QR Codes for health passes. For the CNIL, on the other hand, there is one thing that has (almost) been useless: TousAntiCovid. This Monday, July 4, the National Commission for Computing and Liberties published its fifth gear on the digital and technical tools deployed during the health crisis. And surprised, she now considers their usefulness “marginal”.

Contact tracing questioned

If TousAntiCovid has proven to be rather effective in recording and storing vaccination evidence, health passes as well as the results of PCR and antigen tests, the application is particularly singled out for its limited role in the fight against the spread of the virus. Remember that initially, the government software indeed promised to function as a tracer capable of alerting its user in the event of contact, even brief, with a patient.

This contact tracing feature, however presented as the main utility of the application, would in fact have played only a role “marginal” during the pandemic. It must be said that even by downloading ToutAntiCovid, several conditions had to be met to benefit from it. Obligation to hold a smartphone (preferably Android), to activate Bluetooth permanently, but also to have updated their medical situation to activate remote transmission from the application… The list is long, and few users have finally exploited the software to its full potential.

For the CNIL, the failure of TousAntiCovid is therefore largely based on the fact that the contact tracing was “highly dependent on number of actively used apps“. Gold, “usage statistics for the contact tracking feature (proportion of positive cases declaring themselves in the app, number of users notified, proportion of people who tested positive having declared themselves in the app after being notified, etc. ) do not seem particularly high” emphasizes the organization.

No privacy issues

Just 2 years after its first marketing in June 2020, the application, first known as StopCovid then renamed TousAntiCovid seems definitively doomed to disappear. No major evolution of the software has been deployed for several months, and the last update dating from June 16 only mentions “various improvements and fixes“.

In the middle of its pessimistic report, the CNIL nevertheless gives a good point (of size) to the application. Despite the many ethical criticisms concerning the use of personal data, TousAntiCovid benefits from satisfactory guarantees in terms of data protection. A previous report from the CNIL had also pushed the application to review its copy on certain points.