Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing
Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP-3T, stylized as dp3t) is an open protocol developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to facilitate digital contact tracing of infected participants. The protocol, like competing protocol Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT), uses Bluetooth Low Energy to track and log encounters with other users. The protocols differ in their reporting mechanism, with PEPP-PT requiring clients to upload contact logs to a central reporting server, whereas with DP-3T, the central reporting server never has access to contact logs nor is it responsible for processing and informing clients of contact. Because contact logs are never transmitted to third parties, it has major privacy benefits over the PEPP-PT approach; however, this comes at the cost of requiring more computing power on the client side to process infection reports.
| Developed by |
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|---|---|
| Introduced | April 4, 2020 |
| Industry | Digital contact tracing |
| Compatible hardware | Android & iOS smartphones |
| Physical range | ~10 m (33 ft) |
| Website | https://github.com/DP-3T/documents |
The Apple/Google Exposure Notification project is based on similar principles as the DP-3T protocol, and supports a variant of it since May 2020. Huawei added a similar implementation of DP-3T to its Huawei Mobile Services APIs known as "Contact Shield" in June 2020.
The DP-3T SDK and calibration apps intend to support the Apple/Google API as soon as it is released to iOS and Android devices.
On the 21 April 2020, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health announced that the Swiss national coronavirus contact tracing app will be based on DP-3T. On the 22 April 2020, the Austrian Red Cross, leading on the national digital contact tracing app, announced its migration to the approach of DP-3T. Estonia also confirmed that their app would be based on DP-3T. On April 28, 2020, it was announced that Finland was piloting a version of DP-3T called "Ketju". In Germany, a national app is being built upon DP-3T by SAP SE and Deutsche Telekom alongside CISPA, one of the organisations that authored the protocol. As of September 30, 2020, contact tracing apps using DP-3T are available in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland.