Privacy in Crisis: Participants' Privacy Preferences for Health and Marketing Data during a Pandemic

The severity of COVID-19 and the need for contact tracing has resulted in new urgency for investigating two mutually exclusive narratives about the importance of privacy. The assertion by some technology advocates that privacy is no longer an issue in the face of a pandemic has been repeatedly reported; while others advocated for its centrality. The rejection of contact tracing apps, in part because of privacy, has also been widely reported. Simultaneously, different tracing apps implement different conceptions of privacy. For any contact tracing app to function the technology must provide security and privacy implementations that are usable and acceptable. Towards that goal, we sought to better understand risk perceptions about data use during a public health crisis. To do this we conducted a between-subject online survey to identify participants' risk perceptions about their data being collected and shared during a public health crisis. The survey results do not support claims in prior work that people are comfortable with sharing their private information during a public health crisis; but instead offered nuanced responses depending on type of information, purpose of use, and recipient, thus reifying previous work rather than suggesting a fundamental difference. We note that participants' privacy risk perceptions remain similar whether data are to be used to address health risks or for traditional marketing. Finally, our findings show that device type, not just data type, should be taken into account when designing a tracing app that aligns with participants' privacy perceptions.