{"id":8036,"date":"2020-04-30T05:52:51","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T11:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8036"},"modified":"2020-04-30T05:52:51","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T11:52:51","slug":"a-major-source-of-skepticism-about-the-infection-tracing-apps-is-distrust-of-google-apple-and-tech-companies-generally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8036","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA major source of skepticism about the infection-tracing apps is distrust of Google, Apple and tech companies generally\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2020\/04\/29\/most-americans-are-not-willing-or-able-use-an-app-tracking-coronavirus-infections-thats-problem-big-techs-plan-slow-pandemic\/\">Craig Timberg,&nbsp; Drew Harwell and&nbsp;Alauna Safarpour:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A major source of skepticism about the infection-tracing apps is distrust of Google, Apple and tech companies generally, with a majority expressing doubts about whether they would protect the privacy of health data. A 57 percent majority of smartphone users report having a \u201cgreat deal\u201d or a \u201cgood amount\u201d of trust in public health agencies, and 56 percent trust universities. That compares with 47 percent who trust health insurance companies and 43 percent who trust tech companies like Google and Apple.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI don\u2019t feel like they have a good track record of taking care of people\u2019s privacy and data. And I don\u2019t want to give them more if I don\u2019t trust them,\u201d said Brent Weight, 43, a Republican-leaning independent voter who runs a small trucking company in Rigby, Idaho. \u201cSeems like every other day you\u2019re hearing of a data breach in a big company, and they\u2019re losing credit card information and everything else. For them to just tell us it\u2019s going to be safe and anonymized, I\u2019m not going to take them at face value.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Among Americans overall, 41 percent say they both have a smartphone and are willing to use an infection-tracking app, the poll finds. Oxford University researchers have suggested that 60 percent of a country\u2019s population would need to use a coronavirus-tracking app like this to stop the viral spread. Reduced adoption could limit its effectiveness in slowing new infections and deaths.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Craig Timberg,&nbsp; Drew Harwell and&nbsp;Alauna Safarpour: A major source of skepticism about the infection-tracing apps is distrust of Google, Apple and tech companies generally, with a majority expressing doubts about whether they would protect the privacy of health data. A 57 percent majority of smartphone users report having a \u201cgreat deal\u201d or a \u201cgood amount\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8037,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036\/revisions\/8037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}