The rise in COVID-19 cases also gave rise to contact tracing apps around the world.?
It even forced Apple and Google -- two rival companies in the field of tech to join hands and develop a contact tracing app to help contain the spreading of the novel coronavirus.?
And in India, the government launched Aarogya Setu -- a made in India contact tracing app that is currently working to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases in India. The app came into the news when PM Modi asked everyone to install the app on their phones, resulting in the app to cross over 100 million downloads in a short span of time.
Many privacy advocates were hesitant to give the app a try due to fears of being constantly tracked by the government. Aarogya Setu app got even more negative response when the app was made mandatory for employees returning to work (although this rule was struck off later), and for people travelling in trains/ flights.?
In case you were one of the many who didn¡¯t want your account and data to be stored on the platform servers forever, today might be your lucky day, as now the app has added a feature to allow the users to delete their account permanently from the servers.
Users can go to the settings in the Aarogya Setu app and scroll down to the option ¡®Delete My Account¡¯. Here it asks the user to add the phone number with which they registered. During this process, the app warns that while this will delete all the data from the user¡¯s phone, it¡¯ll take 30 days for the deletion to happen in the government servers.?
Along with this, Aarogya Setu has also added a feature which offers an approximate time as well as the location of possible infection risk.?
As per a tweet by Aarogya Setu¡¯s official twitter handle, "In case your status has been assessed as Moderate Risk or High Risk meaning your screen is Yellow or Orange, Aarogya Setu will also let you know the date, time & approximate location & duration of such BT contact with someone who has been diagnosed COVID positive.¡±
Recently, to ward off privacy concerns, Aarogya Setu went open source while also releasing its source code on GitHub to make developers better understand the functioning of the app while also helping them find any security vulnerabilities with the app if any.