TY - GEN
T1 - Contact Tracing Apps for COVID-19
T2 - 7th IEEE International Conference on Behavioural and Social Computing, BESC 2020
AU - Ali, Amal Awadalla
AU - Elfadl, Asma Hamid
AU - Abujazar, Maha Fawzy
AU - Aziz, Sarah
AU - Abd-Alrazaq, Alaa
AU - Shah, Zubair
AU - Belhaouari, Samir Brahim
AU - Househ, Mowafa
AU - Alam, Tanvir
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 IEEE.
PY - 2020/11/5
Y1 - 2020/11/5
N2 - Contact tracing apps are powerful software tools that can help to control the spread of COVID-19. In this article, we evaluated 53 COVID-19 contact tracing apps found on the Google Play Store in terms of their usage, rating, access permission, and user privacy. For each app we identified the country of origin, number of downloads, and access permissions to further understand other attributes and ratings of these apps. Our results showed that contact tracing apps had low overall ratings and nearly 40% of them were requesting 'dangerous access permission' including access to storage, media files, and camera permissions. We discovered that user adoption rates were inversely correlated to access permission requirements. To the best of our knowledge, this article summarizes the most extensive collection of contact tracing apps for COVID-19. We recommend that future contact tracing apps be more transparent in permission requirements and justify permission requests to preserve the app users' privacy.
AB - Contact tracing apps are powerful software tools that can help to control the spread of COVID-19. In this article, we evaluated 53 COVID-19 contact tracing apps found on the Google Play Store in terms of their usage, rating, access permission, and user privacy. For each app we identified the country of origin, number of downloads, and access permissions to further understand other attributes and ratings of these apps. Our results showed that contact tracing apps had low overall ratings and nearly 40% of them were requesting 'dangerous access permission' including access to storage, media files, and camera permissions. We discovered that user adoption rates were inversely correlated to access permission requirements. To the best of our knowledge, this article summarizes the most extensive collection of contact tracing apps for COVID-19. We recommend that future contact tracing apps be more transparent in permission requirements and justify permission requests to preserve the app users' privacy.
KW - COVID-19
KW - Contact Tracing
KW - Coronavirus
KW - Mobile Apps
KW - Privacy
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85101660187
U2 - 10.1109/BESC51023.2020.9348327
DO - 10.1109/BESC51023.2020.9348327
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85101660187
T3 - Proceedings of 2020 7th IEEE International Conference on Behavioural and Social Computing, BESC 2020
BT - Proceedings of 2020 7th IEEE International Conference on Behavioural and Social Computing, BESC 2020
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Y2 - 5 November 2020 through 7 November 2020
ER -