On 8/18/2020 at 9:43 AM, Advocate said:

I disagree with your contention that pre-2013 entry to Thailand is not in the database. When you go to the Immigration Bureau to do a 90-day report in person the official enters your application into a computer.

 

Therefore your data is in the computer. IB has excluded you from 90-day reporting by not enabling your reporting online.

There are 40 to 50 immigration offices. There may be more than one office in a province. Some offices serve several provinces that do not have an office of their own. So "just do it in person" may be right down the street you live on, or it may be a 6 or 7 hour drive each way. It is a serious error to refer to "the immigration database" (note the singular noun). "In a computer" (singular noun) is similarly wrong. There are in fact many: about 50 local ones, hopefully all backed up regularly and reliably by a computer expert at each provincial office, a "central" database with some fraction of immigration's data, a 90 day online reporting database, a database for land crossing and airport entry stations, ..... And these databases are not all continuously and reliably in touch with each other. Some may only have Windows 10 Professional, whereas others have the very latest version of dBase III running under version 3.1 of Windows. Some collect the other information that they do not have and so can automatically respond instantly when you do online reporting, while other offices only respond when Sleepy Somchai in the back corner remembers to manually check for requests, and some refuse to do online reporting at all, maybe not even accepting mail in requests. This fragmentation exists all through immigration's IT actions. What forms to I need to do a certain task? Well, there is no master copy: some offices have a crisp, modern PDF printout to give you that correctly lists the latest rules, and some have a blurry copy of a blurry copy of a locally typed page from 15 years ago where the right hand 6 cm of text was not even on the copy machine glass. This "facilitates" every police officer at every desk at every immigration office making up their own nonsense rules.  And on this forum we have to keep asking "Where do you live? What office do you go to?"

On 8/18/2020 at 10:05 AM, ubonjoe said:

I am only repeating what immigration told me by email shortly after online reporting first started.

What your local offices puts into their computer is not linked to the online reporting site. The database the online system checks when submitting page one of the application is created by entries to the country.

"best practices" today usually include "use cases". During the design process, write down, in great detail, everything a company does. Because if you miss anything at all, a computer system built for that company will not do all of that company's work -- it will be broken by design. Almost everything that the Thai government touches suffers from this fault. If the needed data for online reporting is currently scattered all over Thailand (which is a common historical situation in any environment), then part of the job is to go and collect it. "Oh, that's dull and boring and I'd rather go and play in Facebook all day." Well, then don't get a computer job. The Online Reporting in 2013 should have started with the list of existing expats living in Thailand. Or at least, the senior police officer at each office could have been given an account on the land/airport entry system that had access just to "enter" an old foreigner: in the years and years and years since then, they would have captured most of this data as people complained -- and those people would have stopped complaining. Maybe, during the weeks and weeks of boring lock-down, one or more people at immigration drove around Thailand and typed in the missing data from each local office (or more likely, some offices but not others), and that's why at least some foreigners who last entered before 2013 are now reporting that the system finally works for them.

Another best practice is "normalization": a given piece of data should be stored at one and only one place. Otherwise, every line of code that changes data must perfectly remember to make the exact same change for every copy of the data every single time a change happens. Bug avoidance. The problem with third normal form or Boyce-Codd normal form or fourth normal form is that it is not mechanical, it requires careful thought about the meaning of the data; it is not easily automated. So if you have 19 different copies of a piece of data, you are just begging for anomalies ..., um, bugs. "Oooo, I don't have time to make my program correct, I have to go into Facebook and update my status to say that I'm updating my Facebook status." This is Thailand, where instead of saying "TL;DR" about the database textbook, you say "IKGATSO" ("I Kinda Glanced At The Slides ... Once).

The first image is the URL text box of the Brave browser (a derivative of Chrome that protects against ads jumping around), showing "Not secure" because the dead certificate prevents a secure connection, and the URL is abbreviated without the protocol word "http://". Clicking in the text box and hitting the HOME key shows the full URL, as in the second image. If you click on the "Advanced" button on this page, it shows the third image, which explains that the dead certificate is the problem, that the local desktop computer clock is OK, and so the problem at immigration STILL has not been fixed. If you click on the "Proceed" link on the last line, you can just go on working, which is OK here, but most of the time is a bad idea.

Then, talk about stupid, on the next page, you'll see that the 15 page User Guide for this site, which is only of interest to foreigners, is entirely in Thai.

On 8/17/2020 at 11:35 PM, sactime said:

Chiang Rai Immigration tells me that cannot use FireFox to access it, must use IE.  But my computer does not have IE, Microsoft upgraded to Microsoft Edge.

...

Nothing I have will allow a connection due to the government link not having the http// in front of it.

IE 10 running unmodified on an old copy of Windows may, at least by default, not check security certificates and so let you through, whereas a current copy of Firefox, as well as Edge, is fairly sure to do proper checking, notice the expired certificate, and thus complain and block your access. The immigration office probably wants you to go back to IE 10 because they have noticed that this "works", without understanding that the reason is the lack of certificate checking in the ancient browser. Certificates have an expire date, and the company you buy it from should start pestering you long before then to renew it, so the person in charge must be a total moron. Ask immiration to open up his brain case and push the "ON" switch.

...

A browser may show an abbreviated version of a URL. The protocol type word like "http://" is in the URL, the browser is just not showing it, to save space. If you copy such a short URL from the URL entry text box, and paste it into Notepad, you'll see the protocol word magically appear again.

On 8/18/2020 at 1:59 PM, DrTuner said:

I don't see what difference IE/firefox/chrome does. If you trace the http calls, they are very simple HTTP POSTs. There's very little javascript there, too and no flash or ancient activex that I can see.

It does make a difference. When people realized that using a secure connection ("https://") was better than a plain TCP connection, it was a problem that vast numbers of existing URLs still said to be insecure ("http://"). If your browser lets you install "add-on" code, it may have a package like

    https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

which automatically makes the browser use a secure connection even though the URL is written as insecure. Your browser may or may not allow add-ons, it may or may not have one like this, the add-on may or may not be turned on by default, you may or may not remember turning it on yourself. If you're curious enough, install something like WireShark, and watch how each of your browsers actually connects to immigration. The EFF add-on gives you a visual indication on the web page when it "promotes" an insecure connection.

Command line program that lets you manipulate the different kinda of password on a PDF file:

    https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-server/

You could remove the password from the existing file and mail the unprotected copy. If you then add a new, different password to the copy, it is again protected but you don't have to tell the recipient what the current password is. The program's "cat" operation just makes a new copy of some file.

Read the terms and conditions of the QueQ app very carefully. The app wants like every possible permission that Android has, to snoop around at all the data everywhere on your phone, And the author claims the right to do anything he wants with anything he finds: it sounds more like his business is selling data to aggregators than scheduling restaurants.

When you install it, it records the hardware identity of your phone, and the serial number of your SIM; if you uninstall it and then re-install it, you must use exactly the same identity, because it remembers forever, at his place, what it has snooped about you.

Also read all the reviews: many complaints about the user interface not working, about restaurants not honoring invitations so you have to stand in line anyway, about needing to be very near the place or even right at it to make a reservation -- so you cannot plan your trip from home in advance. It has the feel of an amateur hacking together something in his garage, and wondering why he isn't rich by now.

The Thai government has bought into it, though. For more and more things, you have to schedule an appointment in advance, and every department seems to be making its own separate oddball scheduler app. But in this case, it's not a government product, it is third party code from ... some guy in Bangkok. And once you get to the park, you MUST fuss with not only the QueQ app, but also the Thai Chana app, no choice -- it is clear that whatever eventually happens with the virus, Thai Chana is never, ever going away.

Inconsistent information at other news sites, such as https://thethaiger.com/coronavirus/phukets-sirinat-national-park-to-open-again-from-wednesday

What, Thailand doesn't have an army? Let all the excess generals take a day off from overthrowing the government. Check a tank out of the armory. Drive it up and down the sidewalks on both sides of the road. Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! Sorted.

On 6/6/2020 at 6:21 PM, blackcab said:

Just checked. I have this on my Samsung Galaxy as well. Here is a screenshot:

 

 

 

The long, thin picture does not have enough resolution to read the text. The link

    https://support.google.com/android/answer/9888358?hl=en#:~:text=How the app may determine,The day the contact happened.

appears to be the source of it.

Use the COVID-19 Exposure Notifications System on your Android phone

Turn off Exposure Notifications

1. On your Android device, open the Settings app.
2. Tap Google  COVID-19 Exposure Notifications.
3. Turn off Exposure Notifications, or turn off notifications for a specific app.

Delete your exposure history

1. On your Android device, open the Settings app.
2. Tap Google  COVID-19 Exposure Notifications.
3. Tap Delete random IDs  Delete.

If you were exposed to someone who reported having COVID-19
You may get a notification from the public health authority app that you were exposed to COVID-19. If you get a notification, the app will guide you on what to do next.

A much more informative and less ambiguous description is quoted here

    forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1167639-covid-19-notification-on-android-google-and-ios-apple/?do=findComment&comment=15499431

    Covid-19 Notification on Android (Google) and iOS (Apple) - General topics - Thailand Visa Forum by Thai Visa | The Nation

in response #15 as the site link

    https://www.google.com/covid19/exposurenotifications/

    Exposure Notifications: Using technology to help public health authorities fight COVID‑19

1 hour ago, Swiss1960 said:

I do not know of course how this new functionality was rolled out and when and on which versions or even, if the rollout is completed.. but if you go to your phones Settings and search for "Covid", then either you see a "COVID-19 exposure notification" or nothing.. in which case yes, you do not have this new functionality.

 

Do you allow your phone to automatically update apps and operating systems or are you doing this manually only? Then you might not have it based on missing updates

The link

    https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1167361-android-covid-19-exposure-notificaation-already-on-your-phone/?do=findComment&comment=15499223

points to another discussion in TVF on this subject. I have posted pictures of what the installed Covid update looks like.

On 6/6/2020 at 4:21 PM, Crossy said:

Google keeps tabs on where your phone is, and has done for a long time (unless you turn the facility off).

 

Please can you post a screenshot of what you're seeing that's covid related?

I have a brand new Samsung phone that I bought on June 2 to replace my old one that the morons at  Thai "repair" shop destroyed. I have been setting it up and playing with it. Automatic updating of apps and of the system is turned off. The first picture is a screenshot of the Settings icon on the home screen. On that screen is a rectangle with

    GOOGLE

    Google Settings

The second picture is a screenshot of what you see if you click on that rectangle. I do not remember the Covid line when I was looking around at all he stuff on the phone. And while I added many apps in Google Play, and updated apps in Play several times, I do not think that this is what installed Covid, because it is not an app, it is part of the operating system. However, at 23:50 on June 2, it offered a system update (the third picture is a screenshot of it that I saved), and at 01:45 on June 3 I accepted the system update and it installed (the fourth picture is a screenshot of that). Notice that nothing about Covid software is mentioned in the system update messages, and I would not have allowed that update if Google had been honest and forthcoming about what was in it. I consider my phone to have been trashed by a lying, stealth update, and am seriously considering testing if a factory reset of the phone will remove it, even though it means setting the phone up all over again.

Crossy, is this what you wanted to see?

2 hours ago, Swiss1960 said:

This functionality on your phones was developed in Switzerland, tested and agreed upon by both Apple and Google and then delivered to all phones using Android or iOS. Nothing is or gets activated until you install an app provided by your Governments Health provider and agree to the use of the tracing functionality.

Oh, but the announcer in the video said repeatedly that you will have no choice, you must install and use the "platform" or the app (note that he repeatedly says that you may use either one, but he never once mentions the sign-up clipboard -- so is that going to go away?!?).

My own experience with the government decree has been that Monday last week I went to many stores all day in Central Festival, had my temperature taken at all of them (from 32 to 44 degrees Centigrade, not challenged or questioned at any), never even glanced at the QR code picture or the clipboard, and was not questioned at all. And the same this afternoon at Big C, Western Union and KFC.

The government announcer in this video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SslA-AAPnNU&list=PLezFsrqeLPRP_TuOHAgCgOerOe8iRDZip&index=3&t=0s

    Covid 19 Daily Briefing May 28, 2020 - YouTube

speaks English well, and is quite consistent in calling the old ThaiChana web pages "the plaform", distinguished from calling the new one "the app".

Note particularly:

2:20

And in the third phase it will be mandatory for business operators and establishments to use the ThaiChana platform as well as the consumers, the customers who visit the business establishment, to use the ThaiChana platform when entering the business establishment.

8:37

on the slide, 13 million people (about 1/3 of the customers) never check out

10:43

Now, the Ministry of Digital Economy has been developing the ThaiChana platform. The ThaiChana platform will simply of course continue to be used in terms of using the QR code reader and everything, but they have developed this further to have an alternative mode of using ThaiChana. So they are developing the ThaiChana application now for both Android and IOS systems to improve basically and fundamentally the user experience and effectiveness of contact tracing. And this will be fully operational in both modes, Android and IOS operating systems, very soon, most likely over the weekend. And the rational for upgrading into an app, as I mentioned before, the usual one, meaning the QR reader, is still possible to be used, you can use that of course, depends on which is more convenient, and aside from that platform the app is in addition to that. The rational for using the app is of course first to improve the user experience in checking in and checking out because the users do not have to have a screen to read the QR code, they can just press Check In / Check Out on a button on that application. Secondly, it does not infringe the user's privacy. It also resolves the issue of fake telephone numbers, as users will be notified with a One Time Password OTP to verify the number used, for that application. And if a case of Covid is found, they will be notified via the application itself as well. And if you forget to check out of this establishment, the application provides / facilities the easy checking out of the establishment once you already leave the establishment. So if you go home and forget to check out of three department stores and two restaurants, you can actually do that through the ThaiChana application, which will be available to be of use very soon, most likely over this weekend. So everyone is encouraged to use ThaiChana, either the platform or the application, so that they can be promptly notified of the positive cases.

16:50

How does contact tracing using ThaiChana work if a case of Covid positive is found? How will registered users be informed of the case? How will they be given the test free of charge? As I mentioned, the platform, and soon the application, serves to alert all stakeholders, owners of businesses, the customers. If the confirmed case is found the platform enables the officials of the disease control department as well to trace the movements of infected person, and they will be able to contact people who were in the same venue at the same time as the infected person through the contact number registered and the information on the platform and these people who will be those who are alerted of an infection will be elligible to receive Covid testing free of charge in designated hospitals. 
 

59 minutes ago, Swiss1960 said:

It will NOT give your information to anybody.

So, you're claiming that there has never, ever, ever been a bug in any Android or IOS software, and there never, ever, ever will be. Because if that's not true, and hackers find and exploit that bug, which they are very good at, then any vestige of "privacy" immediately goes down the toilet.

So, both Apple and Google have decided that they can secretly and silently trash people's phones without the "owner's" approval? "Trust us, we know much better than you what you want, and we'll do what we please with what you think is your property, but which we've decided that we really own." Gee, that gives them a lot of credibility, just inspires a ton of trust. If they had honestly and openly NOTIFIED people of the change, EXPLAINED why it was a good idea, and ASKED PERMISSION, then THAT might inspire confidence, and make people inclined to agree and comply.  But appointing themselves high almighty gods will probably inspire a lot of anger, and thus non-compliance. Whatever happened to Google's founding maxim "Don't be evil"? The issue is NOT whether contact tracing is a good or a bad thing (when done correctly): the PROBLEM is Google's high handed assumption of godhood.

I don't have any Bluetooth devices, and it can be a battery hog if used inadvertently, so it is turned off on my new phone. After much discussion and revision, the API that Google and Apple finally proposed uses short range Bluetooth exchanges between phones, of known or anonymous identifiers, recorded either locally or remotely, to SELECTIVELY recognize and record potential exposure to other possibly infected people (nominally within 2 meters distance and 15 minutes duration), because collecting too much data would give an impossibly large number of "contacts" to have to trace.  But the first release of the ThaiChana "app", among many other problems, did NONE of the Google and Apple API design, and did little to improve upon the earlier web page system (which the daily government briefing repeatedly calls a "platform"). It didn't even speak English -- as such, it might be worth installing and never launching, waving the phone around wildly, and loudly yelling at the security guard "Cannot! Cannot! No hab passa Angrit!!!"

Google and Apple have effectively declared war on the users of their operating systems. God help them if any hacker decides to fight back -- it only takes one person in the whole world with enough knowledge to create an exploit, and there's room in the protocol for quite a bit of chaos just in denial of service attacks.

This article

    https:/www.bbc.com/news/technology-52355028

    Coronavirus contact-tracing: World split between two types of app - BBC News

has a simple explanation of the protocol feedback, discussion and evolution, plus a nice diagram of choices involved.

7 hours ago, Jingthing said:

Total paranoia. 

They'll ask people to get tested and possibly self isolate. 

You don't need symptoms to have it. 

News reports of this go back at least to mid April. The government statements at the time said you WOULD be taken to an isolation center, no option, and you WOULD be given a real corona virus blood test there, no choice, where you would remain until your lab test results came back. No "ask", no "possibly", no "self isolation": detention, contacting you is not something you can just ignore if you please, they plan to come and get you. The trouble with that is, reports of repatriation flights arriving mentioning lab tests usually say something like "results expected sometime next week": it takes Thailand days to resolve a test, during which you will sit in detention staring at the wall. And it's been really vague about cost: the most definitive statement I've heard is that confinement will be free for Thais, varying figures up to several thousand baht per day for foreigners. Now, when Central Phuket re-opened, the press person was bragging that the daily capacity of Festival was about 9,000 customers per day, and of Florestra about 26,000. As a worst case, one infected customer would mean tracking down and isolating 35,000 people -- where the hell would they put them all? And how many years would you wait for your lab results, if Thailand cannot expeditiously handle a few tests from repatriation? A second wave would mean many such instances every day, day after day. The Google API went through revision after revision, not only because of privacy concerns, but to reduce the volume of data. The type 2 Bluetooth in most cell phones can be heard for 8 to 10 meters max, but varying environmental conditions make accurate distance measurement infeasible. Still, constant Bluetooth broadcasting to nearby phones, measured as "can I hear the other phone or not, yes or no?" could approximate the standard of 2 meters or closer and 15 minutes of contact before worrying about infection. You need an app to do this; the web pages of Thaichana cannot access Bluetooth or GPS circuitry. This would give an enormous reduction in the amount of data that need be considered compared to an "everyone who was anywhere in the complex during the infected visit", in a place the size of Central. And Thailand's Thaichana app does ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS DATA REDUCTION, or anything else that came out of the Google reviews and the Google API. In a busy second wave, it would collapse completely. It's fake, feel-good, purely for show, face saving to claim they are doing something. It carries a heavy cost if you are selected erroneously as infected, and offers no offsetting benefit if the whole system collapses under heavy load.

41 minutes ago, mtls2005 said:

But you do give your phone number to register (receiving the OTP via SMS). And you location is known when you scan the QR code at whatever location you enter.

 

I had to use QRs to enter: Terminal 21, my Bangkok Bank branch and Fodland yesterday.

The app is worthless if you do not have a smart phone. The paper sign up sheet is useless if you do not have a phone at all, and therefore do not have a phone number. What about tourists, if they ever are allowed to return, who don't have a Thai SIM plus a data plan, don't want one for just a two week or less trip, don't want to pay expensive roaming from the home country, don't have a fixed local address where the police can come and put them in quarantine by looking up the phone number that does not exist? Don't spend any money in Thailand: we'll make sure you don't, by not letting you into any store!!!.  The assumption that all people are identical in a trivially simple way, and conform to arbitrary requirements, not for a good reason but because the designer doesn't want to consider all use cases nor think too hard about solving the problem, leads to unworkable situations that serve only the lowest common denominator of users. All too common around this place. A technical "solution" that doesn't consider reality, is antisocial, leaves lots of people out, and is even impossible for some, is stupid, useless ..... and typically Thai.

1 hour ago, essox essox said:

I NO HAVE smart phone so how the hell do I get into these SMART SHOPS ?????!!!!

Suppose you not only lack a smart phone, but lack a phone at all? Then you have no phone number to put on the paper sign in sheet. You cannot comply with their stupid, impossible system. "No hab phone, can no enter." Well, you can lie and make up a phone number: Thailand is a Buddhist country, and thus has no concept of sin or morality. So, none of the Thais who have lost their jobs recently have a zero prepaid balance that they can't afford to top up, and so effectively have no phone number.

Thailand is expert at not thinking about more than the most common, obvious case, then saying "We're done, now we can go play in Facebook!!!" Hence creating a system that is broken by design, and impossible for some to use. The single word "cannot" is a complete English sentence in Thailand.

    "High ho, high ho, it's off to work we go."

    "Nice song. Especially the 'High ho' part."

       -- National Lampoon's Bored Of The Rings

1 hour ago, pixelaoffy said:

Been in Central.world Siam paragon and other places ! Just write down first name comes into my head and 10 numbers beginning with a zero

That's really bad advice. Eventually, even the government morons in charge will catch on. Then they'll do something like require the security guards at the entrance to call the phone number to be sure it's real before they let you in. Always use a real phone number, one that you are sure will always be answered, and answered quickly. The number for reporting a rigged meter in a taxi, for example. The number for reporting an extortion attempt by an immigration officer. The Tourist Police number ..... 

The Google Play web page for Thai Chana is almost identical to the Google Play web page for Mor Chana.

In Java, a "package" or directory of source code is often the Internet domain name of the software company, but backwards. The hostname "app.thaialert.com" would be reversed as a directory named "com", with a sub-directory named "thaialert", with a sub-directory of that named "app". The Google Play web page for a Thai Chana app appears to refer to such a directory. But type that into a browser as a URL and it brings up a web page titled "Morchana - หมอชนะ" on the tab's label, with the page containing just the word "Forbidden".

One of the newspaper articles tells you to go to:

https://www.facebook.com/thailandprd/photos/rpp.180940151929407/3204453522911373/?type=3&theater

which responds with:

    Sorry, this content isn't available right now
    The link you followed may have expired, or the page may only be visible to an audience you're not in.

when I'm logged in to Facebook.

I still suspect that there is a web page for companies with an ordinary web form to fill out, that SUBMITs the company's info to the government central site over the Internet, where an ID number for the company is registered in the central database, which sends back a picture file with the company's ID number encoded as a QR code. Then the company could print the picture on paper and tape it to the store window for customers to scan with the camera in their cell phone. An app installed on the customer phone, named either Mor Chana or Thai Chana, would then scan the QR code picture in the store window to get the company's ID number. The app sends the ID of the store and the customer phone number to the central government site over the Internet, to "check in." The app starts recording GPS location readings, and Bluetooth "contacts" with other customers' phones inside the store. The app "checks out" the customer when his phone's camera sees the QR code again in the store window as the customer leaves the store. The central site counts check-ins and check-outs, so there are never too many people in the store at once. So: web page and passive picture for the shop owner, Android (or Apple IOS?) app for the customer.

And maybe none of the shop owner stuff will be permitted until 6 a.m. Sunday?

1 hour ago, Stadtler said:

Oh my oh my .. I think Richard Barrow may be confused.

 

From his FB page:

I have some more information about the Thai Chana application. First thing, it is not an app, but a website. This is only for the owners of businesses to register their place and to get a QR Code. Customers then scan this with their smartphone to check in before they enter. When you check in, it will show if the shop is congested or not. You can review the shop by reporting if they follow safety measures. If any shops are considered a health hazard, the customers who were in the shop will receive an SMS notification to get free #COVID19 testing.

>>> www.thaichana.com

web site, apparently touting what businesses must do to get started:

    <a href="https://www.thaichana.com/">ไทยชนะ</a>

appaarent PDF of an instruction manual:
    <a href="https://www.xn--b3czh8ayeuf.com/manual/Manual%20%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B0%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%A2%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%B3%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%A3%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%84%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%B2.pdf">Manual การลงทะเบียนสำหรับร้านค้า</a>

apparent FAQ:

    <a href="https://www.thaichana.com/faq.html">ไทยชนะ</a>
 

all in Thai, so apparently none of this applies to foreigners, and they can just ignore it all

In case you have an Iphone and all this really is mandatory on Sunday:

    <a href="https://apps.apple.com/th/app/allthaialert/id1505185420?_branch_match_id=719443404369189740&utm_source=10april&utm_campaign=10april&utm_medium=marketing">‎MorChana - หมอชนะ on the App Store</a><br>
 

This app relies on the distribution of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) packets around and then let the app on other devices keep information of who found it. In addition, this app in Thailand also collects GPS data all the time. The app works on Android at all times, but on iOS only works when the app is opened. The data is stored on the government-owned AWS cloud.The app source code was on GitHub.

3 hours ago, nrasmussen said:

I don't see what the language of the website that establishments use to register has to do with who are admitted inside.

The shop owner (at least 51%, if not an Amity corporation) needs to be Thai, so the shop registration page being in Thai should not be a problem -- unless you are a Westerner curious about how the system works. But the Google web page has complaints about the app that the customer must use being only in Thai: that could be bad. Immigration apps did this at first.

No English, so how can it be useful for those of us who don't know Thai?

English would be great

Invasive permission request.
    
Thai language only
    
Should have language choices
    
Only Thai language.
    
English verisioni is not avilabele
    
If you expect EVERYONE that lives in Thailand to use this app you should design so that EVERYONE can understand it! Not EVERYONE that lives in Thailand is Thai or can read Thai. Epic fail. App deleted.

English please!
 

2 hours ago, nrasmussen said:

It's not an app that has to be installed on your phone. You simply use your phone to scan a QR code.

 

Well, that's not true. You need an "app", an application program, to do anything. The code of this program may be something you install, or it may be built into the phone's operating system.

An older UPC bar code, or a newer QR bar code, simply represents text in a picture or X-Y "dots" format, in a reliable way so that whatever reads the dots can check whether they were scanned correctly.

"QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is the trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) first designed in 1994 for the automotive industry in Japan. A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that contains information about the item to which it is attached. In practice, QR codes often contain data for a locator, identifier, or tracker that points to a website or application." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code">QR code - Wikipedia</a>

I have used an Android app called "Screenshot Touch" to take pictures of my phone's screen, and an app called 'QR Barcode Scanner". The first attached image shows the scanner app open with the phone's camera "almost" pointed at the QR code in the Wikipedia page above, showing on my laptop screen; the app will also decode a QR code in a regular picture disk file. The second attached image shows the phone's screen after it grabs and recognizes the plain text represented in this QR code. The text is just the "URL" (a special kind of "URI") of the Wikipedia web page about QR codes, that has the picture that was just scanned. Note that QR app has recognized that the text is a URL, and at the bottom of the app screen there is a button offering to open a browser and take me to that web page. The third attached image is from pointing my phone's camera at the QR code on the Mor Chana web page in Google Play, second row on the left under the Thai guy's picture inside a circle. What does this text mean? Who knows, could be anything.

Another job that this scanner app will do is to prompt you for some text, and encode it into a picture file as one of those little QR squares. A shop owner will want this function.

Here's another article on what's going to happen tomorrow:

    <a href="https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30387842?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=internal_referral">Govt allays fears on privacy as it prepares to launch Covid-19 app on May 15</a>

Note that step #1 for "User" is "Constantly using the application". The Mor Chana app, or program, can give itself the permission to always run all the time your phone is turned on: in other words, with 3 pig-out things always running, your battery is dead meat.

If you own a store, you will have gone to the URL of the "official website" noted in step #1. What URL? Well, if the government has not gotten in touch with you about that yet, it's time to panic, because then you cannot legally open tomorrow. You fill out the information on your store, probably talking to a JavaScript program inside the web page, which will tell the database at the government's central control site all about your store, maybe with JSON, and get an ID number assigned to it. Then it will make a picture file for you that has the text of your assigned ID number. You can either print the picture file out on your printer and tape it to the store window for customers to scan, or set up a laptop in the store window with a graphics program displaying the picture file on its screen. You only have to do this once.

When a customer arrives at your store, he will point the camera of his phone at your little picture file, get the store ID out of it, contact the government's central control site over the Internet, and "check in", sending his phone number and your store's ID number. Maybe the picture file will have long and complicated text, as in the third image I attached, that can tell the customer's phone how to get and install the Mor Chana "app" program from Play or Itunes; otherwise, the (maybe not computer savvy) customer will have to fumble around and manually do the install, holding up the huge line outside the store for ages. Surprise! Surprise! Hahahahaha! What, you expect advance planning in Thailand? Then a huge amount of Bluetooth and Internet chattering (and battery wasting) while you are inside the store, as every phone talks to and records every other phone, and sends all this data over the Internet to the government's central control site. As you leave the store, you point your camera at the little picture shown on the laptop, or taped to window, and your phone contacts the government's central control site and "checks you out." Don't forget to do this (and wake up the security guard so he can spray you in the eyes with hand sanitizer), or the government's central control site will think that you are still around and not let another customer into the store. Note: a customer can't just look in the window to see if the shop is busy: the government's central control site must count every customer in and out of the shop, and this micro-control keeps the shop from getting crowded ("checking congestion in shop" is step 2.5 for customers and step 3.5 for shop owners, in The Nation news article. Note that the shop is totally passive: all processing is done in customer phones and the government's central control site. What if the power fails, or the Internet goes down, or the phone dies? Oh, falang ting too mutt.

Gasp! Choke! Pant! Is that all clear now? ????

I need to go make lots of popcorn for tomorrow.

2 hours ago, Stadtler said:

I'm sure it will all be stored on a server in CHINA.

Would it bother you if the people's republic communist overlords had access to all of the following on your cell phone (at least this confirms it runs Bluetooth, Internet and GPS, so kiss your battery life goodbye)?

This app has access to:

Device & app history

• retrieve running apps

Location

• approximate location (network-based)
• precise location (GPS and network-based)
• access extra location provider commands

Photos/Media/Files

• read the contents of your USB storage
• modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

Storage

• read the contents of your USB storage
• modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

Camera

• take pictures and videos

Microphone

• record audio

Wi-Fi connection information

• view Wi-Fi connections

 

Other

• receive data from Internet
• view network connections
• pair with Bluetooth devices
• access Bluetooth settings
• full network access
• run at startup
• draw over other apps
• control vibration
• prevent device from sleeping
• Google Play license check