Communications of the ACM
Norway Pulls Its Coronavirus Contact Tracing App After Privacy Watchdog's Warning
Norway has suspended use of a coronavirus contact tracing application after the Norwegian Data Protection Authority said it presents a disproportionate threat to user privacy.
Credit: TechCrunch
Norway has suspended use of a coronavirus contact tracing application to allow changes to be made, after the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (DPA) said it presents a disproportionate threat to user privacy.
The Smittestopp app tracks Bluetooth signals to estimate a user’s proximity to others to calculate exposure risk to Covid-19, while also tracking and continuously uploading each user’s location from real-time global-positioning system location data.
The DPA’s Bjorn Erik Thon said the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) “has not demonstrated that it is strictly necessary to use location data for infection detection.”
Another troublesome aspect of the app, according to Luca Tosoni of the University of Oslo, was that app users “are currently unable to consent only to the use of their data for infection tracking purposes, without consenting to their data being used also for research purposes.”
From TechCrunch
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