Indian authorities, to curb the spreading of COVID-19 launched Aarogya Setu COVID-19 Tracking app on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.?
The app within a month¡¯s time is now nearing 100 million downloads on the platforms.
However, the app has been surrounded with privacy concerns, especially after the app has been made mandatory for use for every public or private sector employee. Recently, when authorities announced the commencement of rail services, they made it mandatory for all passengers to be signed up to the app.
Just like India, several other countries around the world have launched their own trackers to keep a track on rising COVID-19 cases. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Review has compared and ranked all the COVID-19 trackers from different countries around the world.?
Here it added five parameters, each parameter awarding the app a star -- whether the app is voluntary or compulsory, whether data is being used for purposes other than health, does it also has use it for law enforcement, whether the data collected by the app is deleted after a specified time, whether the app only collects data for what it¡¯s supposed to and whether the process is transparent.
Out of these five parameters, Aarogya Setu only got two stars, which means it only cleared two of the aforementioned parameters -- for the policy related to data deletion and that the data collection of data for health. The app fails in parameters talking about its use for law enforcement, transparency and being voluntary.
Other apps that MIT Review analysed were from? Czech¡¯s eRouska, Iceland¡¯s Rakning C-19, Austria¡¯s Stopp Corona app, Singapore¡¯s Trace Together, Norway¡¯s Smittestopp and Israel¡¯s HaMagen. Which received five stars.?
Australia¡¯s COVIDSafe, CovTracer from Cyprus, Italy¡¯s Immuni and Poland¡¯s ProteGO received four stars. China¡¯s COVID tracking app got 0 stars since it was completely non-transparent on its functioning along with poor data handling, encryption and deletion.?