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DP-ACT: Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Asymmetric Digital Contact Tracing

Abtahi Fahliani, Azra LU ; Payer, Mathias and Aminifar, Amir LU orcid (2024) 24th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, PETS 2024 In Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2024(1). p.330-342
Abstract
Digital contact tracing substantially improves the identification of high-risk contacts during pandemics. Despite several attempts to encourage people to use digital contact-tracing applications by developing and rolling out decentralized privacy-preserving protocols (broadcasting pseudo-random IDs over Bluetooth Low Energy-BLE), the adoption of digital contact tracing mobile applications has been limited, with privacy being one of the main concerns.
In this paper, we propose a decentralized privacy-preserving contact tracing protocol, called DP-ACT, with both active and passive participants. Active participants broadcast BLE beacons with pseudo-random IDs, while passive participants model conservative users who do not broadcast BLE... (More)
Digital contact tracing substantially improves the identification of high-risk contacts during pandemics. Despite several attempts to encourage people to use digital contact-tracing applications by developing and rolling out decentralized privacy-preserving protocols (broadcasting pseudo-random IDs over Bluetooth Low Energy-BLE), the adoption of digital contact tracing mobile applications has been limited, with privacy being one of the main concerns.
In this paper, we propose a decentralized privacy-preserving contact tracing protocol, called DP-ACT, with both active and passive participants. Active participants broadcast BLE beacons with pseudo-random IDs, while passive participants model conservative users who do not broadcast BLE beacons but still listen to the broadcasted BLE beacons.
We analyze the proposed protocol and discuss a set of interesting properties. The proposed protocol is evaluated using both a face-to-face individual interaction dataset and five real-world BLE datasets. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DP-ACT protocol outperforms the state-of-the-art protocols in the presence of passive users. (Less)
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author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies
volume
2024
issue
1
pages
330 - 342
conference name
24th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, PETS 2024
conference location
Bristol, United Kingdom
conference dates
2024-07-15 - 2024-07-20
ISSN
2299-0984
DOI
10.56553/popets-2024-0019
project
WASP: Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program at Lund University
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
9395fbc4-54f8-419d-afad-806fcc5e4c42
date added to LUP
2023-09-13 15:28:05
date last changed
2025-04-04 14:15:23
@article{9395fbc4-54f8-419d-afad-806fcc5e4c42,
  abstract     = {{Digital contact tracing substantially improves the identification of high-risk contacts during pandemics. Despite several attempts to encourage people to use digital contact-tracing applications by developing and rolling out decentralized privacy-preserving protocols (broadcasting pseudo-random IDs over Bluetooth Low Energy-BLE), the adoption of digital contact tracing mobile applications has been limited, with privacy being one of the main concerns.<br/>In this paper, we propose a decentralized privacy-preserving contact tracing protocol, called DP-ACT, with both active and passive participants. Active participants broadcast BLE beacons with pseudo-random IDs, while passive participants model conservative users who do not broadcast BLE beacons but still listen to the broadcasted BLE beacons. <br/>We analyze the proposed protocol and discuss a set of interesting properties. The proposed protocol is evaluated using both a face-to-face individual interaction dataset and five real-world BLE datasets. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DP-ACT protocol outperforms the state-of-the-art protocols in the presence of passive users.}},
  author       = {{Abtahi Fahliani, Azra and Payer, Mathias and Aminifar, Amir}},
  issn         = {{2299-0984}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{1}},
  pages        = {{330--342}},
  series       = {{Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies}},
  title        = {{DP-ACT: Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Asymmetric Digital Contact Tracing}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/200336740/PETs_32_.pdf}},
  doi          = {{10.56553/popets-2024-0019}},
  volume       = {{2024}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}