Anti-Covid app: Have we given the GAFAs free access to our privacy?

In the absence of a Covid-19 vaccine, the electronic tracking system of the infected represents an effective solution to limit the spread of the virus. Several governments thus made recourse to digital technology in order to create anti-Covid apps for their citizens.

These applications allow the exchange of data between smartphones, cloud and health institutions. As soon as a person tests positive for Covid-19, the subjects who have been in contact with them are notified. Such apps are supposed to preserve the anonymity of users by generating pseudonyms.

However, at some stage of the process (data transfer, contact with healthcare institutions, etc.), it is possible to associate the pseudonyms with the real identity of the smartphone's user.

It is in fact the two giants Google and Apple who have joined forces to create in record time a stop-covid application which necessarily uses the GAFA’s databases. In China, it is the internet giant Alibaba which manages the data of the local application.

Such initiative certainly unveils the GAFA's will to help. However, could there be other reasons explaining their interest on the “Covid contact tracing” app?

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