Towards Understanding The Privacy Dimensions of Personal Information Tracking for Controlling Pandemics

COVID-19 Research Area(s): Equipment & Technology Innovations, Politics, Governance & Law, Social Impacts

A variety of information-tracking applications have been implemented worldwide with the goal of fighting the current COVID-19 pandemic. The uncertain degrees of the transparency and oversight of these applications prompt privacy concerns. This project is conducting semi-structured interviews with Canadians to investigate their perceptions, preferences, and privacy concerns regarding the data collection, sharing, storage, and use by these tracking applications. The project findings will inform the design of such applications to better support users’ needs as well as to contribute to slowing the spread of pandemics.