On 10 April 2020, Google and Apple announced a joint effort to create a coronavirus tracking system using Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus. The companies have said that user privacy and security will be central to the design. 

The system would not track people's physical location, but would pick up the signals of nearby phones and store the connections between them. If one person tests positive, they could tell the app they've been infected and it could notify other people whose phones were in close range in the preceding days. In addition, when the app sends information over Bluetooth, it would broadcast an anonymous key rather than a static identity.