Unfortunately, in this new COVID-19 era it’s not just our computers we have to protect from infection, but also ourselves and our loved ones. Along with social distancing, wearing a mask, and washing our hands, technology is also playing a part in the fight against the pandemic. COVID-19 contact tracing apps have been deployed by both governments and organizations around the globe.
Not all contact tracing apps are equal and an app used by a company to contact-trace its employees while at work can have different objectives than those of an app used by a government to contact-trace its citizens. Any app with tracing functionality should follow best practices when it comes to the collection of data and how that data is stored and used, and there are different rules and regulations relating to this in different parts of the world. This report will analyze 25 popular COVID-19 tracing apps to find out how they do when it comes to security and privacy. However, first, we need to lay out which type of apps we will be looking at and how they work, as well as some of the laws and usage requirements that can shape contact tracing apps.
Government vs private
Tracing apps developed and used by governments and ones used by businesses can be for very different use cases. A government app’s intent is to keep track of who a user has been in contact with and to alert users if they have been near a person infected by the virus. An app provided to employees by their employer may be intended to do the same but in a geofenced area, namely the workplace. As well as this it may be needed to trace an infected user’s movements so that t ..
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