The Privacy control in the most used mobile health applications in Mexico during the first year of the COVID 19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID 19 pandemic meant changes in people's lives because the health authorities of each country promoted confinement to reduce the speed of contagion, avoid the collapse of health systems. In such a situation, the use of mobile applications was essential to maintain the continuity of activities such as work, education and entertainment. Additionally, some countries took advantage of the use of mobile applications to facilitate the monitoring of the pandemic and the early detection of new infections through a diagnostic scale. Although the use of this type of tool is promoted, it has many advantages and is promoted by the World Health Organization, the results of different investigations reveal areas of opportunity that prevent adequate treatment of personal data.

This report presents the results of the first investigation of its kind in Mexico, in which the most used mobile health applications in the country during the first year of the pandemic were identified, as well as the conditions they offered to make their applications transparent. practices in terms of data processing and functionalities arranged so that people maintain control of their data and therefore their privacy. Although the results are applicable in the first instance to health applications, in the opinion of the researcher it is estimated that the methodology and recommendations may be useful for technologies that use similar data treatment schemes.