Aarogya Setu App made mandatory for employees

Recent Highlights about the Aarogya Setu App:

• Aarogya Setu App has been deemed as a major player in the war against COVID-19.
• The government urges social media platforms to promote the app.
• Many speculate about the privacy hazards of the App.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have asked their employees and frontal staff to use the Aarogya Setu app. It has been deemed mandatory for every staff who has any sort of contact with others. 

For those of you who still don’t know what it is, the Aarogya Setu app was launched by the government in order to help citizens stay safe during the pandemic. It gives you an idea about the cases there are in your area and if you have come in contact with any of them or not. It is primarily a contact-tracing app. The app also helped you with self-assessment.

Many big shot companies such as Swiggy, Zomato, and Grofers have made it mandatory for their employees to use the Aarogya Setu app. Heavyweights of e-commerce like Amazon and Flipkart have also proposed to their workers to make use of the app. 

The Aarogya Setu app has been made mandatory but the privacy issues have not been ignored. According to some privacy and cybersecurity experts, the app is not as secure as they would’ve liked. They have also said that it can be used only for contact tracing. There is no way to know if a person is a carrier or not. There is no empirical basis to the claim that contact tracing apps have assisted in the prevention of the outbreak.

The executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, Apar Gupta, said that the app is a form of surveillance. The reason being its unclear privacy policy and weak data regulation framework. Furthermore, he said that the government has failed to define the usage of data collected. Neither have they specified for how long it will be stored and whether it will be used later for any other purpose.

While speculations over its security issues continue, big companies haven’t been thwarted from using it. As the Aarogya Setu App is a government app, they fully trust it and intend to use it. Some also believe that if their delivery-partners use the app, the costumers will be encouraged to use their services more often. 

According to a Swiggy spokesperson, the majority of their delivery staff are already using the app. Meanwhile, Amazon and BigBasket are raising awareness about the app. They hope to make the delivery personnel aware if at all they wanted to use it. 

The Aarogya Setu App has become part of a mandate to make the prevention of the spread of the virus more successful. It is now part of the SOP, standard operating procedures, asking all ground staff to install and use it.

The lockdown is set to end on May 3rd. Hopefully day by day, our country will emerge better of it.