Understanding how the COVID-19 virus spreads is one of the ways that governments and healthcare officials around the world can help stop it or slow the infection down. However, sometimes people can be less than honest about who they’ve come into contact with, where they’ve been, and so on, which can make it very difficult.
However, over in the EU, it seems that people might have to give up a bit of their privacy to help combat the virus because according to a recent agreement between EU carriers, they have announced plans to share mobile phone location data with the authorities to help the European Commission better understand how the virus spreads.
Naturally, this has led to some concerns about privacy and how the data will be used, but according to reports, the data will be anonymized to help protect user privacy. An official working with the European Commission has also stated that once the crisis is over, the data will then be deleted, claiming that it will not be kept nor used to police people.
This is not the first time that the idea of using location data to track the virus has been floated. Previously, a report from The Washington Post suggested that the US government was exploring a similar plan . Over in Israel, the government has already authorized the use of cellphone data to track the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Filed in . Read more about Coronavirus, Covid-19, Health and Privacy. Source: reuters