I hear you, this comes up more and more often. I remember reading that Singapore had something like this (for contact tracing, I think), but they'd give you a dedicated device if you didn't have a phone. Ugh.
I like telling companies who want my number: No, my phone is for people I know to call me, not corporations. Other times I tell them that I don't have a phone and ask them if they are refusing me service. Not saying I have a perfect record, sometimes it is convenient to have the mechanic call when the car is done, etc. But the more I see companies who don't need a dossier on me asking for my personal info the harder I want to push back. I seek out and appreciate organizations that don't do this. I joke that I might end up living in a commune one day!
I can see this becoming a bigger problem. I've been following the idea of covid-vaccination-tracking applications, and don't have a good feeling about any of that. I'm expecting that the vaccination campaign will work well enough for that idea to be a moot point, but also expecting that companies and governments will want to do the extra tracking anyways, because their incentives are not aligned with the general population for stuff like this.
Its been a bigger and bigger problem where installing an app is just expected and almost impossible to avoid in some situations.
I also hate how its hard to explain to normal people. I don't have a problem with covid restrictions. I'm happy to wear a mask, social distance, etc. I just don't want to be sending the government with a horrible privacy/security history a log of everywhere I have been if I can avoid it. But you will be seen as some covid conspiracy theory nutcase if you object.
Its also awkward to keep telling stores I don't want to give them my address or phone number.
> I just don't want to be sending the government with a horrible privacy/security history a log of everywhere I have been if I can avoid it.
Are you sure this is what your local app does? Many COVID-19 government apps were built reflecting this desire for privacy, I've written about the New Zealand one previously but lots are like this.
When you scan a QR code with that Kiwi app your phone learns you went somewhere and when ("This code is for the Auckland central library, and it's 1430 on Tuesday 16 March") but it doesn't tell the government, they don't care and could only make things worse by losing the information. It just remembers where you were.
Then when the government finds out that an infected person was careful to stay home except, oh yeah, they did pop to that library to get a book to read while they stayed home, for about 15 minutes, around 2-3pm on Tuesday, they send all those apps a message (it also goes in a press release but who seriously reads those?) and the app goes "Auckland central library? 1400 to 1500 on 16 March? That's a bingo" - and you get a message telling you that you should get tested, or to watch out for symptoms or whatever the government advice is in that particular case.
So effectively your phone is just simplifying work you'd otherwise have to do, instead of you laboriously checking the list of locations in your local paper or on a web page any time there's a breach, the phone matches it correctly for you.
If you're infected, you do have the option to have your phone tell the tracing people everywhere it remembers you going recently, but that's up to you whether you feel morally obligated to help them. Contact tracers in countries with low incidence are mostly from STI clinic backgrounds (which of course also need tracing), so "I went to the restaurant even though I had virus symptoms" is at least easier to confess than "I fucked some random stranger I met in a bar last Tuesday even though I'm married"
Nope, I know 100% it sends the record off to the government server and then when a location has a reported case, they call you using the info they have. Know the guy who built the system and he says while the data is encrypted in the db, the government also has the key to access everything.
Its also partly about the precedent it sets. Its now becoming required to carry a phone around with you and hand over more of your data without any opt out.
