https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/mit-develops-privacy-preserving-covid-19-contact-tracing-inspired-by-apples-find-my-feature/

One of the efforts that’s been proposed to contain the spread of COVID-19 is a contact trace and track program, that would allow health officials to keep better tabs on individuals who have been infected, and alert them to potential spread. Contract tracing has already seemingly proven effective in some parts of the world that have managed to curb the coronavirus spread, but privacy advocates have big reservations about any such system’s implementation in the U.S.

There are a number of proposals of how to implement a contact tracing system that preserves privacy, including a decentralization proposal for a group of European experts. In the U.S., MIT researchers have devised a new method to would provide automated contact tracing that taps into the Bluetooth signals sent out by everyone’s mobile devices, tying contacts to random numbers that aren’t linked to an individual’s identity in any way.