Aiming to fight Covid-19, the French government created an app for the citizens called StopCovid. It is used to warn the users if ever they were in contact with an infected/possibly infected person.
Three weeks after its launching, the software was judged unsuccessful. StopCovid was installed 1.8 million times yet uninstalled by 460 000 users. The French indeed feared for their personal data, and the centralized storage of data.
In contrast, different results were shown in Germany as Corona-Warn-App, the equivalent of the French app, provides a decentralized storage in accordance with data protection. Four hours after its creation on 16 June 2020, Corona-Warn-App was installed 6 million times. Three months later, downloads rose to 18 million.
In the European Union, governments are well-aware of the importance of technology in reducing the spread of the virus. However, the use of different strategies prevents the development of a common warn app. Worse still, the many methods of data storage block the sharing of information.
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