Mobile Applications for Privacy-Preserving Digital Contact Tracing

Mobile applications for triggering Covid-19 exposure notifications without sacrificing the users' privacy are a promising tool for complementing manual contact tracing that is a resource-demanding and labor-intensive task when the infections grow rapidly. This advanced seminar presents the fundamental concepts behind the realization of large-scale Mobile Contact Tracing Apps (MCTA). We provide an overview of this emerging field, while focusing on Bluetooth-based privacy-preserving solutions. We tackle the topic from multiple perspectives: background, state-of-the-art technologies, protocols, real-life implementations, performance indicators, security and privacy aspects, as well as future directions. The seminar presents the big picture, so that the target audience can further expand their knowledge by studying the material and following the references. Our presentation will be delivered through the lens of 2 country-wide MCTA, namely the Corona-Warn-App (CWA) and the CovTracer-Exposure Notification (CovTracer-EN) app deployed in Germany and Cyprus, respectively.