More people willing to share location data for contact tracing, new study shows - TribLIVE

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A new study shows more people across the country choosing to share their phone’s location data during the pandemic, allowing entities to more easily track the pandemic.

Researchers from three universities hoped to gauge the public attitude toward digital contact tracing using smartphones, which have always gathered location data on their users. But in the weeks since the covid-19 pandemic gained traction in the U.S., special attention has been given to data’s role in curbing the spread of the disease, while many cellphone users express concern over privacy.

Since the pandemic gained traction, more and more people are sharing their data, said Beibei Li, one of the report’s authors. There was a noticeable decrease in the number of people opting out of their phone’s automatic data collection in mid-March, when the national state of emergency was declared.

“People are becoming more willing to share their location data,” said Beibei, an associate professor of information technology and management at Carnegie Mellon University. Or, “at least they opt out less.”

Experts say data can be used to trace individuals’ contact with others who have tested positive for covid-19. Tech companies Apple and Google have developed a mobile app to track the data using Bluetooth technology; Carnegie Mellon developed another, NOVID, which uses ultrasound waves.

Beibei and her co-authors studied 20 different cities — including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and several other major metro areas — focusing intentionally on 10 cities that voted Democratic and 10 that voted Republican in the last election. Both red and blue cities displayed an increased support for digital contact tracing, according to the report, but Beibei said there was a “stronger willingness to share” from the blue cities.

It was especially noticeable, she said, because before the pandemic, blue cities had higher opt-out rates for sharing their location data. Those rates went down following the national declaration of emergency in mid-March and following state-level lockdown orders.

Another notable takeaway: Beibei said there was a strong relationship between social demographic factors and an individual’s willingness to participate in contact tracing. Higher-income men showed much more concern for privacy than lower-income women, she said. There wasn’t a significant difference among racial groups, she said.

There was also a strong connection between an area’s demonstrated willingness to share location data and their willingness to practice social distancing.

“People who travel less during the day are more likely to opt in,” Beibei said. It suggests an “underlying social cause between both of these behaviors.”

For their study, Beibei and other researchers partnered with “a leading data collector that aggregates location data across hundreds of commonly used mobile applications,” according to the report. The collector provided data from Jan. 1 to April 15 on both Android and IOS users. Beibei said the researchers traced more than 100 days of location data for more than 3 million individuals across the country – resulting in roughly 22 billion location positions over the entire four-month period.

The new study sheds light on the barriers to effective digital contact tracing in certain areas of the nation, Beibei said. While some countries have launched and adopted universal digital applications for everyone, there is still doubt that the same strategy would work as well in the U.S. Identifying areas where more individuals opt out of digital contact tracing can inform public officials about the need for other physical measures, Beibei said.

“We do see there’s a good value that the policy makers can look into to understand which areas of the country are more likely to be be able to better contact trace, and which areas are weaker in that,” she said.

Beibei said greater educational measures can be deployed in certain areas to explain the technology and help people understand how it works – emphasizing that all data is kept completely anonymous. She also suggested more education surrounding the coronavirus as a whole, given the assumption that many people don’t want to share their data because they are skeptical about the pandemic.

Teghan Simonton is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Teghan at 724-226-4680, tsimonton@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Categories: Coronavirus | Local | Allegheny