UK racing to improve contact-tracing app's privacy safeguards

Worries public will not use app after security specialists and MPs raise concerns

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NHS officials are racing to introduce greater privacy safeguards for the contact-tracing app at the centre of the government's lockdown exit strategy amid mounting concern from security experts, MPs and users.

Whitehall sources conceded to the Guardian that they were two steps behind in public engagement" because the app - which tracks everyone a user has met and warns them to self-isolate when the user reports Covid-19 symptoms - has had to be developed at high speed.