  Many people around the world are worried about using or even downloading
COVID-19 contact tracing mobile apps. The main reported concerns are centered
around privacy and ethical issues. At the same time, people are voluntarily
using Social Media apps at a significantly higher rate during the pandemic
without similar privacy concerns compared with COVID-19 apps. To better
understand these seemingly anomalous behaviours, we analysed the privacy
policies, terms & conditions and data use agreements of the most commonly used
COVID-19, Social Media & Productivity apps. We also developed a tool to extract
and analyse nearly 2 million user reviews for these apps. Our results show that
Social Media & Productivity apps actually have substantially higher privacy and
ethical issues compared with the majority of COVID-19 apps. Surprisingly, lots
of people indicated in their user reviews that they feel more secure as their
privacy are better handled in COVID-19 apps than in Social Media apps. On the
other hand, most of the COVID-19 apps are less accessible and stable compared
to most Social Media apps, which negatively impacted their store ratings and
led users to uninstall COVID-19 apps more frequently. Our findings suggest that
in order to effectively fight this pandemic, health officials and technologists
will need to better raise awareness among people about COVID-19 app behaviour
and trustworthiness. This will allow people to better understand COVID-19 apps
and encourage them to download and use these apps. Moreover, COVID-19 apps need
many accessibility enhancements to allow a wider range of users from different
societies and cultures to access to these apps.
