France to launch COVID-19 tracing app

According to a BBC News report, France’s Prime Minister  Edouard Phillippe announced that the contact-tracing app StopCovid will be available on 2 June. Like many other contact-tracing apps, StopCovid uses Bluetooth signals to record contacts with others. France’s version takes a centralised approach, which means that data of contacts is stored on a centralised server. As France has opted out from the Google-Apple exposure notification software, StopCovid is not interoperable with the apps developed by its neighboring countries, such as Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In order to deter concerns on security vulnerabilities, the French government has partnered with the European bug-bounty programme YesWeHack, and will offer cash rewards to anyone who discovers security flaws in the app after its release.