Chinese Health Code System (China)
While you may be surprised that India has taken such a draconian approach to contact tracing apps, it probably won’t come as a big shock that the Chinese government’s Chinese Health Code System app is even worse.
In fact, there’s almost no information available to the public about how the Chinese app works behind the scenes, except for the fact that it makes extensive use of location data, mines as much information as it can form people and their phones, and of course it isn’t voluntary — at least not if you want to be able to move around.
The Chinese app works by assigning colour codes to users that they must present when moving around from place to place, much like an ID card, and QR codes that must be scanned when entering and exiting locations. Chinese citizens provide their full identity information to the app, and then complete a questionnaire on travel history and current symptoms, after which they’re assigned a colour code indicating their risk level and the places they’re allowed to go.
It’s unclear how these codes are assigned, but if they attempt to scan into a store or business where they’re not permitted due to their assigned profile, they’re denied entry, and the same is also true if they don’t have a code to present because they’re not using the app. Meanwhile, at each and every interaction, the user’s location, the QR codes they’ve recently scanned, and other information are sent to servers run by Chinese authorities.