A Study of Users' Privacy Preferences for Data Sharing on Symptoms-Tracking/Health App

Symptoms-tracking applications allow crowdsensing of health and location related data from individuals to track the spread and outbreaks of infectious diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time in history, these apps were widely adopted across the world to combat the pandemic. However, due to the sensitive nature of the data collected by these apps, serious privacy concerns were raised and apps were critiqued for their insufficient privacy safeguards. The Covid Nearby project was launched to develop a privacy-focused symptoms-tracking app and to understand the privacy preferences of users in health emergencies. In this work, we draw on the insights from the Covid Nearby users' data, and present an analysis of the significantly varying trends in users' privacy preferences with respect to demographics, attitude towards information sharing, and health concerns, e.g. after being possibly exposed to COVID-19. These results and insights can inform health informatics researchers and policy designers in developing more socially acceptable health apps in the future.