Informative logging results to be available in app

[corneliusroemer]

Motivation

There is currently no way as far as I know, to verify properly that the app is really sending and receiving tokens in all situations, e.g. when phone is on Battery Saver, Sleep mode etc.

Since the app was tested only on a small subset of devices in a small subset of use case, it's necessary to be able to verify by the interested public at large that the app is doing its job properly under all circumstances and report bugs when this is not the case.

Suggestion

Please add a way to see communication logs under settings in some sort of way. For example, a time stamp every hour with summary info on how often beacons were sent and how often beacons were read (not how many were seen, just to check that it's running properly). In addition, it'd be good if the logs mentioned if connection to the server is working as expected.

I feel very unsure about whether the app is doing its job properly. In normal usage, many possible bugs are not visible at all. Since one doesn't expect to be positive or be in contact with other positive people.

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Internal Tracking ID: EXPOSUREAPP-5018 (statistics overview)
Internal Tracking ID: EXPOSUREAPP-2136

[JProof]

similar to corona-warn-app/cwa-app-android#518

[tkowark]

Dear @corneliusroemer , we discussed this with the dev team, and there currently is no way of doing this from the application end. Sending and receiving Beacons is handled entirely by the ENF and there is no way for the app to provide the information you want to present.

As it affects both apps, I'll move this issue to the documentation repository and label it as backlog. If the ENF API provides the information at one point, Product Management and the UX team can re-evaluate if and how to display this information.

[corneliusroemer]

Thanks @tkowark for discussing this.

One thing that might have got lost, if I'm not wrong you are in charge with the server of exposed keys. So you could provide information of how many exposed keys have been received. This of course doesn't really test core functionality.

That beacons are sent by the phone can be tested by other phones with apps such as this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.davidgyoungtech.beaconscanner

So at least the sending part can be verified.

[corneliusroemer]

There are very many good points made in corona-warn-app/cwa-app-android#518 which was canonicalised to this issue.

Anyone reading this discussion here should check out 518, too.

[yorickreum]

Interesting showcase: https://twitter.com/merlinchlosta/status/1273293511803244546 (sadly in German). I would really like to see a feature like this. For a heatmap, GPS is needed, therefore this maybe is better to be implemented in an additional separate app. Maybe this is something other (open source) developers can develop, does not need to be done by SAP / Telekom.
For the CWA app, for me, the live accumulated number of received beacons from other devices would be enough (to monitor the functionality). This should be possible even if the API does not support it (yet), just by monitoring Bluetooth directly.

[tkowark]

Dear @corneliusroemer and all other contributors that proposed a similar idea,

thank you very much for your proposal.

To give the community a space for discussing new feature ideas or enhancements that might not be taken up immediately by the development teams, we created the cwa-wishlist repository.

This idea is one of these feature ideas or enhancements. Consequently, we will move this issue to this repository and allow the community and you to further refine it, discuss pros and cons, and evaluate alternatives.

The issue will not be closed in this repository to ensure long-term visibility. All issues in the cwa-wishlist repository will be discussed with our contracting entities. They will decide whether they will be implemented or pursued further. As soon as we have any updates, we will let you know about the details.

Best regards,
TK
Corona-Warn-App Open Source Team

[hatzfeld]

Please consider this feature request from the perspective of human psychology and public relations. Even users without technical expertise would like to be able to see that the app fulfills its purpose. Then they will be ready to recommend it to others.

It would be optimal if two users could press a button to check whether their two apps had exchanged beacons. Instead of this some other type of reliable information may help.

Bitte sehen Sie dieses Anliegen auch unter der Perspektive der menschlichen Psychologie und der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. Auch Nutzer ohne technischen Sachverstand möchten sehen können, dass die App ihren Zweck erfüllt. Dann werden sie sie auch weiterempfehlen.

Optimal wäre es, wenn zwei Nutzer auf Knopfdruck prüfen können, ob ihre beiden Apps Beacons ausgetauscht haben. Stattdessen kann aber auch eine andere Art verlässlicher Information helfen.

[tens0rfl0w]

@hatzfeld Sadly, this is a really bad idea regarding public trust and safety concerns. As of right now, the app has no permission to communicate directly with the bluetooth interface of the device (Which is a good thing in many ways). To implement such testing/verification method, the app would need to access the Bluetooth interface directly, but even if the user could check if basic beacon discovery works, it wouldn't give any information about the status of the EN framework (database, risk calculation, etc.). This is not possible to implement looking at the basic design of the framework.

[tens0rfl0w]

A little update:
The threshold to make keys available for download is now reached. You can now see the total number of keys that are downloaded from the server in the settings app:

[AlleSchonWeg]

@tens0rfl0w Wo finde ich denn die Settings App? Oder ist das nur für iOS?

[bennokress]

What does Matched Key Count mean exactly in this screen? Are those the keys that have been found on the server and on my device (= are a match) or are those all keys on my device that have been compared (matched) with the server keys? Or something entirely different?

I'm aware that the wording here is nothing we can control, but I'm curious …

Antwort an @AlleSchonWeg

Wo finde ich denn die Settings App? Oder ist das nur für iOS?

Einstellungen > Datenschutz > Health > COVID-19-Kontaktprotokoll > Kontaktüberprüfungen

[AlleSchonWeg]

@bennokress Da Du Swift Entwickler bist, meinst Du wohl iOS. Habe Android.

[tens0rfl0w]

@bennokress This is the total number of keys that have been found on your phone and on the server (=Matched). So if the number is greater than 0, you have been exposed to a person that has marked himself as infected.

[felixlen]

Your phone stores encounters for 14 days and deletes encounters that are older than that. So that most likely means that you had the encounter with the person with this particular diagnosis key in the hash file 14 days prior to the day where the number of matches drops from 1 to 0.

[chandu411]

Okay. But still app shows one exposure with low risk. Why is like that.

Your phone stores encounters for 14 days and deletes encounters that are older than that. So that most likely means that you had the encounter with the person with this particular diagnosis key in the hash file 14 days prior to the day where the number of matches drops from 1 to 0.

Okay. But still app shows one exposure with low risk. Why is it like that? . If it is 14 days prior it should not say exposure right?

Hash is created for the keys from the server or for the local stored keys?

[Peter-Einhausen]

Since 14. October it seems to me that there is only one hash per day exchanged. Why?
Instead of an improvement (wish that number of OWN recorded contacts were shown) the information content is even worse.
For seeing the daily numbers of downloaded keys only https://micb25.github.io/dka/ (Diagnoseschlüssel) remains.
Great success; compliment.

[Ein-Tim]

@Peter-Einhausen
Could you share a screenshot from the screen where you see that "only one hash per day is exchanged"

Are you using iOS or Android?

[daimpi]

@Peter-Einhausen

Since 14. October it seems to me that there is only one hash per day exchanged. Why?

You're on Android, right? This observation is probably due to the different way CWA 1.5 handles the key handover to the Exposure Notification Framework (ENF). Instead of handing over 14 separate packages potentially DoS'ing ENF and causing timeouts, CWA 1.5 under Android now submits all packages in one batch (cf. PR 1088, PR 1150).

Although 14th Oct seems a bit early as CWA 1.5 only became available on the play store on Oct 19 🤔.

[Peter-Einhausen]

Confirmed, 14.10. is a typing error. Up to 19.10. each day 14 hashs, till 20.10. only 1.
Confirmed, I use Android. Screenshuts attached.

[Ein-Tim]

The next versions will contain some statistics (corona-warn-app/cwa-app-ios#1807 & corona-warn-app/cwa-app-android#2043).