Do Covid-19 apps protect your personal privacy?

Researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have found that most of the COVID-19 apps required access to users’ personal data, but only a handful indicated the data would be anonymous, encrypted and secured.

Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the study revealed that mobile apps are helping track the spread of COVID-19 to contain the outbreak, but the apps also raise concerns about personal privacy.

“What is disconcerting is that these apps are continuously collecting and processing highly sensitive and personally identifiable information, such as health information, location and direct identifiers, the researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US, wrote.