Due to the convenience of access-on-demand to information and business solutions, mobile apps have become an important asset in the digital world. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, app developers have joined the response effort in various ways by releasing apps that target different user bases (e.g., all citizens or journalists), offer different services (e.g., location tracking or diagnostic-aid), provide generic or specialized information, etc. While many apps have raised some concerns by spreading misinformation or even malware, the literature does not yet provide a clear landscape of the different apps that were developed. In this study, we focus on the Android ecosystem and investigate Covid-related Android apps. In a best-effort scenario, we attempt to systematically identify all relevant apps and study their characteristics with the objective to provide a First taxonomy of Covid-related apps, broadening the relevance beyond the implementation of contact tracing. Overall, our study yields a number of empirical insights that contribute to enlarge the knowledge on Covid-related apps: (1) Developer communities contributed rapidly to the Covid-19, with dedicated apps released as early as January 2020; (2) Covid-related apps deliver digital tools to users (e.g., health diaries), serve to broadcast information to users (e.g., spread statistics), and collect data from users (e.g., for tracing); (3) Covid-related apps are less complex than standard apps; (4) they generally do not seem to leak sensitive data; (5) in the majority of cases, Covid-related apps are released by entities with past experience on the market, mostly official government entities or public health organizations.
翻译:在Covid-19大流行背景下,应用程序开发者以各种方式加入应对努力,发布针对不同用户基础(如所有公民或记者)的应用程序,提供不同服务(如定位跟踪或诊断援助),提供通用或专门信息等。虽然许多应用程序通过传播错误信息甚至恶意软件而引起某些关切,但文献尚未提供在数字世界中开发的不同应用程序的清晰面貌。在本研究中,我们侧重于Android生态系统,并调查与Covid和android有关的应用程序。在最佳设想中,我们试图系统地确定所有相关应用程序并研究其特征,目的是提供与Covid相关应用程序的第一分类,将相关性扩大到实施联系追踪之外。总体而言,我们的研究产生了一些有助于扩大与Covid相关应用程序相关知识的多数经验性见解。 (1) 开发者社区为Covid-19快速提供数据,一般为Covid和Diroid应用程序用户提供在线数据。 (Covid-laxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)