Michigan college requires students to install tracking app

As a condition of returning campus, all 1,500 students at Michigan’s Albion College were required to download and install a contact tracing app called Aura, which was developed by Pennsylvania-based Nucleus Careers and tracks students’ real time locations 24/7 with no opt-out. collects and stores location data to determine whether a student has come into contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus. Students are also not allowed to leave campus without permission, and can be suspended and removed from campus if they turn off location detection. The app was discovered to have two security vulnerabilities, and to use hardcoded secret keys for the app’s backend servers on AWS; these were fixed without acknowledgment.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/19/coronavirus-albion-security-flaws-app/

Writer: Zack Whittaker
Publication: TechCrunch