| Mobile phone apps designed to track the spread of the coronavirus and alert users to possible infections have always had privacy advocates a little on edge. While authorities tout contact-tracing apps as a helpful way to recall interactions between people that could have passed on the virus, privacy defenders have cautioned against government access to vast amounts of sensitive data.
In a report Tuesday, human rights group Amnesty International called out some of the worst offenders. It found that Bahrain's BeAware Bahrain, Kuwait's Shlonik and Norway's Smittestopp apps stood out as among "the most alarming mass surveillance tools" it had assessed.  A C-19 Covid symptom tracker in April in London. Photographer: Getty Images/Getty Images Europe In an analysis of 11 contact-tracing apps across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Amnesty said the three apps in particular "put the privacy and security of hundreds of thousands of people at risk" because they tracked users' locations in near real-time by frequently uploading GPS coordinates to a central government server.
That location information in turn could easily be linked to individuals, Amnesty said, because users in Bahrain and Kuwait are required to sign up to the app with their national ID number, while Norway requires registration with a valid phone number.
Location data is some of the most sensitive information that can be collected about someone. It not only reveals where someone lives but could divulge who they might have spent the night with or other deeply personal information like whether they visited an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
For Amnesty, contact tracing apps can only be effective if people are confident their privacy is protected. That's why it urged the three governments to immediately pull their apps.
Norwegian data protection authorities have already clamped down. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health on Monday halted use of their app and deleted data it had collected after a warning by the privacy watchdog.—Natalia Drozdiak | 
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