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Attorneys General Express Concern Over Contact Tracing Apps

  • The National Association of Attorneys General (“NAAG”) sent a letter signed by a bipartisan group of 39 AGs to Apple, Inc. and Google, LLC, seeking assurances that all COVID-19-related contact tracing and exposure notification applications (“apps”) on the companies’ respective platforms will adequately protect consumers’ private data.
  • The letter acknowledges the public health value of digital contact tracing and exposure notification apps, but requests that the companies verify that each such app is affiliated with a public health authority, remove any app for which such an affiliation cannot be verified, and pledge to remove all such apps once the COVID-19 national emergency ends.
  • New York AG Letitia James also sent letters to Apple and Google relating to contact tracing and exposure notification apps, raising concerns about the accuracy of the notifications and requesting that the companies protect consumer privacy by barring app developers from using collected data for targeted advertising or including in-app sales, requiring the deletion of data on a rolling 14-day basis, and requiring that apps include clear and prominent disclosures about the exposure protocol used, the data collected, and the risks of false positives and false negative results.