Tracing the Virus without surrendering privacy is becoming a matter of concern. An open-source approach to enable a globally compatible contact tracing using digital technology is underway.

Peter Van Valkenbrrrgh, Board Member at ZCash, “We must “be vigilant against the imposition of tracing and identity technologies that could, long term, jeopardize our autonomy and privacy. That approach is seemingly well underway in China, but should not be on the table here in the U.S.”

Sydney Ifergan, the crypto expert tweeted:  “Ideally, we need contact tracing technologies which do not steal our privacy. We need to really think beyond the pandemic. Good that Zcash Foundation is a part of making contact tracing without surveillance vide the TCN Coalition.”

Contact tracing is important because it will help slow down the spread of the Corona Virus. This can also be the key to end lockdowns.  The focus now is to get secure tracing apps which will help tracing by being run on the devices of billions of users from across the world.

ZCash and TCN Coalition

The TCN Coalition is a privacy first protocol and it is viewed by a dozen experts.  It is open source, free of charge, and extensible.  Interestingly, it is available for implementation immediately.

TCN stands for Temporary Contact Number.  It is the core of the TCN protocol. A completely anonymous number is created to record private transactions between compatible mobile devices without allowing them to be tracked.

The execution requires that all major technology companies, app developers, and governments to be able to implement apps which are compatible with the shared protocol from TCN.

ZCash foundation joined the TCN coalition on April 07, 2020.

Anonymity is very important to the user, while we live in a world where we use open source software projects, large scale distributed networks and end user products. An interesting write up stated that sometimes we land up over prescribing technical solutions. We need to know the trade off and the nuances in the whole process to avoid the process of sacrificing privacy.

A wide range of things like arbitrary behavior should be avoided apart from privacy concerns.  Safely using anonymity tools is also the need of the hour. We need to keep track of how the privacy-preserving contact tracing methods help keep the virus at bay without having to lose privacy. As we previously stated, this should not jeopardize post pandemic privacy.