Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Computers, Materials and Continua

Publication Date

1-1-2021

Abstract

The recent unprecedented threat from COVID-19 and past epidemics, such as SARS, AIDS, and Ebola, has affected millions of people in multiple countries. Countries have shut their borders, and their nationals have been advised to self-quarantine. The variety of responses to the pandemic has given rise to data privacy concerns. Infection prevention and control strategies as well as disease control measures, especially real-time contact tracing for COVID-19, require the identification of people exposed to COVID-19. Such tracing frameworks use mobile apps and geolocations to trace individuals. However, while the motive may be well intended, the limitations and security issues associated with using such a technology are a serious cause of concern. There are growing concerns regarding the privacy of an individual's location and personal identifiable information (PII) being shared with governments and/or health agencies. This study presents a real-time, trust-based contact-tracing framework that operates without the use of an individual's PII, location sensing, or gathering GPS logs. The focus of the proposed contact tracing framework is to ensure real-time privacy using the Bluetooth range of individuals to determine others within the range. The research validates the trust-based framework using Bluetooth as practical and privacy-aware. Using our proposed methodology, personal information, health logs, and location data will be secure and not abused. This research analyzes 100,000 tracing dataset records from 150 mobile devices to identify infected users and active users.

ISSN

1546-2218

Publisher

Computers, Materials and Continua (Tech Science Press)

Volume

70

First Page

1017

Last Page

1032

Disciplines

Computer Sciences

Keywords

Bluetooth, Contact tracing, Covid, Epidemic, Mobile apps, Privacy

Scopus ID

85114556542

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Hybrid: This publication is openly available in a subscription-based journal/series

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