  Contact tracing apps are powerful software tools that can help control the
spread of COVID-19. In this article, we evaluated 53 COVID-19 contact tracing
apps found on the Google Play Store in terms of their usage, rating, access
permission, and user privacy. For each app included in the study, we identified
the country of origin, number of downloads, and access permissions to further
understand the attributes and ratings of the apps. Our results show that
contact tracing apps had low overall ratings and nearly 40% of the included
apps were requesting dangerous access permission including access to storage,
media files, and camera permissions. We also found that user adoption rates
were inversely correlated to access permission requirements. To the best of our
knowledge, our article summarizes the most extensive collection of contact
tracing apps for COVID-19. We recommend that future contact tracing apps should
be more transparent in permission requirements and should provide justification
for permissions requested to preserve the app users privacy.
