Digital Contact Tracing: Large-scale Geolocation Data as an Alternative to Bluetooth-based Apps' Failure

TL;DR

This paper proposes a large-scale geolocation data-based contact tracing method as an alternative to Bluetooth apps, aiming to improve efficiency and privacy in COVID-19 contact tracing efforts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel contact-tracing approach utilizing existing geolocation data from BigTech, ensuring privacy and overcoming Bluetooth app limitations.

Findings

Potential for higher contact detection coverage

Enhanced privacy guarantees for users

Feasibility of large-scale implementation

Abstract

The currently deployed contact-tracing mobile apps have failed as an efficient solution in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. None of them has managed to attract the number of active users required to achieve an efficient operation. This urges the research community to re-open the debate and explore new avenues that lead to efficient contact-tracing solutions. This paper contributes to this debate with an alternative contact-tracing solution that leverages already available geolocation information owned by BigTech companies with very large penetration rates in most countries adopting contact-tracing mobile apps. Moreover, our solution provides sufficient privacy guarantees to protect the identity of infected users as well as precluding Health Authorities from obtaining the contact graph from individuals.