The Changing Landscape of Privacy– Countermeasures in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the landscape of data privacy, and many countermeasures have been developed to lower privacy risks from an epidemic handling system (EHS), e.g., from contact-tracing apps, proximity detection systems, and mobility modeling frameworks. This study discusses the changes in the privacy landscape and highlights the diverse factors causing such changes amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It pinpoints various countermeasures that were recently developed, discusses key lessons that can be derived from this pandemic with respect to privacy, and highlights the actions that can be taken to improve data privacy while using digital tools in pandemic times. This will allow the development of privacy-friendly EHSs to help our society. Our findings can guide the privacy and database community in creating appropriate strategies for data governance without losing guarantees of privacy in COVID-19-like pandemics.