# Contact Tracing Mobile Apps for COVID-19: Privacy Considerations and Related Trade-offs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.11511 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.11511/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 25 Mar 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [From Personalized Medicine to Population Health: A Survey of mHealth Sensing Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00948/) (2021)
- [Protect Your Score: Contact Tracing With Differential Privacy Guarantees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11581/) (2023)
- [TB-ICT: A Trustworthy Blockchain-Enabled System for Indoor COVID-19 Contact Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08275/) (2021)
- [Sentiment Analysis of Users' Reviews on COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps with a Benchmark Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01196/) (2021)
- [Differentially Private Learning of Hawkes Processes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13741/) (2022)
- [HP-BERT: A framework for longitudinal study of Hinduphobia on social media via language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05482/) (2025)
- [Effectiveness of probabilistic contact tracing in epidemic containment: the role of super-spreaders and transmission path reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00910/) (2023)
- [Differential Privacy on Trust Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12045/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Contact tracing is an essential tool for public health officials and local communities to fight the spread of novel diseases, such as for the COVID-19 pandemic. The Singaporean government just released a mobile phone app, TraceTogether, that is designed to assist health officials in tracking down exposures after an infected individual is identified. However, there are important privacy implications of the existence of such tracking apps. Here, we analyze some of those implications and discuss ways of ameliorating the privacy concerns without decreasing usefulness to public health. We hope in writing this document to ensure that privacy is a central feature of conversations surrounding mobile contact tracing apps and to encourage community efforts to develop alternative effective solutions with stronger privacy protection for the users. Importantly, though we discuss potential modifications, this document is not meant as a formal research paper, but instead is a response to some of the privacy characteristics of direct contact tracing apps like TraceTogether and an early-stage Request for Comments to the community. Date written: 2020-03-24 Minor correction: 2020-03-30