Trust Concerns Regarding Health-Related Smartphone Apps in Collecting Personally Identifiable Information Throughout COVID-19-like Zoonosis

Molla Rashied Hussein; Md. Ashikur Rahman; Md. Jahidul Hassan Mojumder; Shakib Ahmed; Ehsanul Hoque  Apu

doi:10.38032/jea.2021.01.005

Authors

Molla Rashied Hussein Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Asia Pacific, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Md. Ashikur Rahman Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Asia Pacific, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Md. Jahidul Hassan Mojumder Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Asia Pacific, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Shakib Ahmed Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Asia Pacific, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Ehsanul Hoque Apu Department of Biomedical Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.38032/jea.2021.01.005

Keywords:

Trust, Smartphone Application, COVID-19, Personally Identifiable Information, Awareness, Privacy, Cyber Security, Recommendations

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 is a zoonosis, which means a disease that contaminates from the animals to the humans. Since it is very highly epizootic, it has forced the public health experts to implement smartphone-based applications to trace its swift transmission trajectory as well as the affected individuals. For this, the individuals’ personally identifiable information is utilized. Nonetheless, these information may hamper privacy and cyber security, especially the trust concerns, if not handled properly. If the issues are not resolved at this very moment, the consequences will induce the mass level population to use the health-related applications in their smartphones inadequately. Therefore, a catastrophe will be imminent for another COVID-19-like zoonosis to come. So, to mitigate, an extensive study was required to address this severe issue, namely, trust concern. This paper has studied the needed by discussing the recently designed and developed health-related applications region by region across the world. Moreover, it has analyzed the benefits and drawbacks. The trust defiance is recognized and inspected from the perspective of an end-user. Some recommendations are advised in the later part of this paper to leverage and collaborate the awareness campaign between the Government, the App Developers and the common individuals.

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