• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.541-564
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• 2024

Contact-tracing applications have significantly contributed to mitigating the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), yet the extensive use of these location-based applications raises serious privacy concerns. Drawing on the Information-Motivation-Behavioral (IMB) skills model, our study investigated factors that influence users' protective behaviors toward location privacy, elucidating the privacy paradox and the mediating role of implementation intention. Through an online survey conducted in China with 311 participants, we found that privacy concerns and privacy awareness positively affected the use of mobile location service settings, with privacy concerns mediating the relationship between privacy awareness and the intention to protect privacy. Furthermore, our study demonstrated the privacy paradox, revealing the pivotal mediating role of implementation intentions in bridging the gap between users' intentions and their actual behaviors. This study offers new perspectives on the privacy paradox, particularly through the lens of implementation intention, and provides valuable insights for motivating greater use of contact-tracing applications. It offers both theoretical and practical guidance for stakeholders to address privacy concerns during global pandemics like COVID-19, thereby encouraging a more widespread and responsible engagement with technology in public health.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.291-307
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• 2021

There has been global efforts to prevent the further spread of the COVID-19 and get society back to normal. 'Contact tracing' is a crucial way to detect the infected person. However the contact tracing makes another concern about the privacy violation of the personal data of infected people, released by governments. Therefore Google and Apple are announcing a joint effort to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy and security central to the design. However, in order to provide the improved tracing application, it is necessary to identify potential security threats and investigate vulnerabilities for systematically. In this paper, we provide security analysis of Privacy-Preserving COVID-19 Contact Tracing App with STRIDE and LINDDUN threat models. Based on the analysis, we propose to adopt a verifiable computation scheme, Zero-knowledge Succinctness Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledges (zkSNARKs) and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to ensure both data integrity and privacy protection in a more practical way.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.644-662
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• 2023

There are still outbreaks of COVID-19 across the world. Ships increase the risk of worldwide transmission of the virus. Close contact tracing remains as an effective method of reducing the risk of virus transmission. Therefore, close contact tracing in ship environments becomes a research topic. Exposure Notifications API (Application Programming Interface) can be used to determine the encountered location points of close contacts on ships. Location points of close contact are estimated by the encountered location points. Risky areas in ships can be calculated based on the encountered location points. The tracking of close contacts is possible with Bluetooth technology without the Internet. The Bluetooth signal can be used to judge the proximity among detecting devices by using the feature that Bluetooth has a strong signal at close range. This Bluetooth feature makes it possible to trace close contacts in ship environments. In this paper, we propose a method for close contact tracing and showing the risky area in a ship environment by combining beacon and Exposure Notification API using Bluetooth technology. This method does not require an Internet connection for tracing close contacts and can protect the personal information of close contacts.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.359-373
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• 2022

The new crown pneumonia (COVID-19) has become a global epidemic. The disease has spread to most countries and poses a challenge to the healthcare system. Contact tracing technology is an effective way for public health to deal with diseases. Many experts have studied traditional contact tracing and developed digital contact tracking. In order to better understand the field of contact tracking, it is necessary to analyze the development of contact tracking in the field of computer science by bibliometrics. The purpose of this research is to use literature statistics and topic analysis to characterize the research literature of contact tracking in the field of computer science, to gain an in-depth understanding of the literature development status of contact tracking and the trend of hot topics over the past decade. In order to achieve the aforementioned goals, we conducted a bibliometric study in this paper. The study uses data collected from the Scopus database. Which contains more than 10,000 articles, including more than 2,000 in the field of computer science. For popular trends, we use VOSviewer for visual analysis. The number of contact tracking documents published annually in the computer field is increasing. At present, there are 200 to 300 papers published in the field of computer science each year, and the number of uncited papers is relatively small. Through the visual analysis of the paper, we found that the hot topic of contact tracking has changed from the past "mathematical model," "biological model," and "algorithm" to the current "digital contact tracking," "privacy," and "mobile application" and other topics. Contact tracking is currently a hot research topic. By selecting the most cited papers, we can display high-quality literature in contact tracking and characterize the development trend of the entire field through topic analysis. This is useful for students and researchers new to field of contact tracking ai well as for presenting our results to other subjects. Especially when comprehensive research cannot be conducted due to time constraints or lack of precise research questions, our research analysis can provide value for it.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.57-64
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• 2021

In this paper, we propose and test the efficacy of an easy-to-use user location certification system for public places that relies on frequencies outside the audible range for humans. The inaudible frequencies come in signal frequency between 18-20 kHz and are generated by general audio speaker. After an individual's smart device detects the signal frequency, it sends the frequency value, user's personal ID, and user's location to a system server that certifies the user's visit location currently. The system server then saves a user visit record and categorizes it by individual. To show the usefulness of this proposed system, we developed a user visit certification application for smart devices linked to a system server. We then conducted a user visit certification experiment using the proposed system, with the result showing 99.6% accuracy. For a comparison, we then held a user visit certification experiment using a QR code, which confirmed that our proposed system performs better than QR code location certification. This proposed system can thus provide restaurants and other facilities reliable user contact tracing and electronic visitor access lists in the age of COVID-19.