Dutch government pauses coronavirus app over data leak fears

THE HAGUE: The Dutch government has temporarily disabled its coronavirus warning app amid data privacy concerns for people who have the app installed on phones using the Android operating system.

Health Minister Hugo de Jonge announced late Wednesday that the CoronaMelder app will stop sending warnings for 48 hours while the government checks if users’ data is secure.

The Dutch app uses “exposure notification” technology developed by Google and Apple that generates random codes that can be exchanged by phones whose users are close to one another for long enough to possibly transmit the virus.