Evaluating contact tracing apps for privacy preservation and effectiveness

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technology has been massively investigated to automate and augment the traditional manual Contact Tracing (CT) process. This results in a variety of smartphone-based CT apps, symptom tracking tools, dashboards, and analytical tools to support the comprehensive digital CT program, where CT apps act as the central instrument. However, the variety of digital CT solutions, especially the CT apps, contain different levels of privacy threat and technical capabilities that are directly linked with effectiveness. Sometimes, the choice of a particular method of the digital CT has an opposite effect to privacy and effectiveness, only to adding uncertainty to decision making regarding digital CT. In this paper, we present a novel approach to quantitatively pre-assess CT apps on privacy preservation and effectiveness. This assessment of CT apps would facilitate developing a shared understanding among policymakers. We also implemented a digital evaluation toolkit and show evaluation of CT apps of a variety of specifications using our toolkit. Our research aims to help addressing the issues of selecting the appropriate digital CT currently faced by national policymakers around the world. © 2021 IEEE.