COVIDFREE App: The User-Enabling Contact Prevention Application

Mimo, E. M.; McDaniel, T.

Governments all over the world are considering employing mobile contact tracing applications to automatically manage, trace, and investigate recent interactions of newly tested COVID-19 infected individuals. The prospective use of such applications has produced several debates surrounding confidentiality, security, data supervision, closeness approximation algorithms, and cyber-attack susceptibility. This paper discusses these concerns in the context of a novel smartphone application architecture, proposed here, that gives users more control and privacy during contact tracing. The proposed application is termed COVIDFREE App, which is aimed at enhancing users' situational awareness through communication of safe and unsafe locations. An overview of the app's architectural design and functionality are presented, including a newly developed Overall Risk Density Safety Factor calculation inspired by COVID-19 density risks and factors of users based on health requirements and several customizable user-specific scenarios. Finally, the paper outlines the benefit to funding and developing contact tracing apps, such as the COVIDFRE App, and discusses advantages of such applications including citizen awareness, relief, and preparedness. © 2020 IEEE.