Chennai: A latest study, after analysing almost 50 Covid-19 apps found on Google Play Store, flagged the worrying lack of privacy measures.
The study by researchers Tanushree Sharma and Masooda Bashir at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said, ‘Fear and uncertainty often win out over civil liberties; however, as has been learned from past crises, such as the (in the US) terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, it can be hard to regain lost liberties.’
“Healthcare providers must absolutely use whatever means are available to save lives and confine the spread of the virus. But it is up to the rest, especially those in the field of information privacy and security, to ask the questions needed to protect the right to privacy,” the researchers said.
The research has suggested anonymisation with random ‘noise’ artificial intelligenceāgenerated ‘noise’ or additively homomorphic encryption and message-based methods to generalise peopleās data while being able to protect usersā privacy.