A First Look at Privacy Analysis of COVID-19 Contact Tracing Mobile Applications
Muhammad Ajmal Azad, Junaid Arshad, Ali Akmal, Farhan Riaz, Sidrah, Abdullah, Muhammad Imran, and Farhan Ahmad

TL;DR
This paper examines the privacy implications of COVID-19 contact tracing apps, analyzing their permissions, data transmission, and security measures to assess privacy risks and protections.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 contact tracing applications focusing on permissions, data handling, and security features to evaluate privacy concerns.
Findings
Many apps request unnecessary permissions
Data often transmitted without strong encryption
Security measures vary widely among apps
Abstract
Today's smartphones are equipped with a large number of powerful value-added sensors and features such as a low power Bluetooth sensor, powerful embedded sensors such as the digital compass, accelerometer, GPS sensors, Wi-Fi capabilities, microphone, humidity sensors, health tracking sensors, and a camera, etc. These value-added sensors have revolutionized the lives of the human being in many ways such, as tracking the health of the patients and movement of doctors, tracking employees movement in large manufacturing units, and monitoring the environment, etc. These embedded sensors could also be used for large-scale personal, group, and community sensing applications especially tracing the spread of certain diseases. Governments and regulators are turning to use these features to trace the people thought to have symptoms of certain diseases or virus e.g. COVID-19. The outbreak of…
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