Apple, Google weigh location tracking rules as EU seeks privacy-based virus apps

Apps to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus should not collect user location data, the European Commission said on Thursday, as Apple Inc and Google weighed whether to work with virus apps that use location tracking.

The EU executive’s recommendation came as part of a unified European approach for using technology to combat COVID-19 and after several EU countries rolled out a variety of apps, prompting criticism from data privacy activists.

Doctors want to be able to identify recent encounters of people diagnosed with the virus to quarantine those potentially infected contacts, and a major question is how to do so while respecting privacy rights. Apple and Alphabet’s Google have proposed one system and are considering how to work with other groups that have overlapping goals and methods.