When the coronavirus pandemic had become a serious problem around the world, Google and Apple collaborated together to create a exposure monitoring program via smartphones, which they quickly included in subsequent updates to make it available for any government to use.
This update reached most Android smartphones through an update to Google services. In the case of the iPhone, only reached users with iOS 13 onwards, that is, from the iPhone 6s. Although the number of users who continue to use an iPhone 5s and an iPhone 6 must be very small, Apple has also remembered them.
It has remembered them and has released a new iOS update, specifically the version 12.5, a version that includes COVID-19 exposure notifications.
So much iPhone 5s like iPhone 6 had stayed on iOS 12.4.9, an update that was released on November 5 to solve various security problems related to FaceTime, FrontParser and several related to the Kernel, security problems that had been detected through Google's Project Zero program.
When this function is activated, the device periodically sends a beacon via bluetooth that includes an identifier. When two people are in contact for a few minutes, their phones exchange and register those identifiers, in this way if one of the two people tests positive for COVID and reports through the application, everyone you have been in contact with will receive a notification, but they will never know who it is.
The problem that we find with this functionality is that each country / state / community is responsible for activating it. In the case of Spain, we still find that most communities are not using it yet. A pity considering that this is one of the most comfortable and reliable methods to control, as far as possible, the spread of the coronavirus.
