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Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing -- Documents

Security & PrivacyProductivity
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24Distinct people
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REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing -- Documents

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I recommend everybody to look at the whitepaper which discusses this type of protocol extensively: https://github.com/DP-3T/documents/blob/master/DP3T%20White%... A lot of the…

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Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month29 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2020-04-03 17:58:01 UTC to 2021-08-18 13:42:25 UTC.

05101520252020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 25 mentions; 9 submissions, 16 commentsApr 20202020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsDec 20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsAug 2021

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
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PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Apr 20202020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC25916
May 20202020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC211
Jun 20202020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jul 20202020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20202020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20202020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20202020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20202020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20202020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20212021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20212021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20212021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20212021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20212021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20212021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20212021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
DP3T - Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing This repository documents a secure, decentralized, privacy-preserving proximity tracing system. Its goal is to simplify and accelerate the process of identifying people who have been in contact with an infected person, thus providing a technological foundation to help slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The system aims to minimise privacy and security risks for individuals and communities and guarantee the highest level of data protection. Who we are We are a international consortium of technologists, legal experts, engineers and epidemiologists with a wide range of experience who are interested in ensuring that any proximity tracing technology does not result in governments obtaining surveillance capabilities which will endanger civil society. The following people are behind this design: EPFL: Prof. Carmela Troncoso, Prof. Mathias Payer, Prof. Jean-Pierre Hubaux, Prof. Marcel Salathé, Prof. James Larus, Prof. Edouard Bugnion, Dr. Wouter Lueks, Theresa Stadler, Dr. Apostolos Pyrgelis, Dr. Daniele Antonioli, Ludovic Barman, Sylvain Chatel ETHZ: Prof. Kenneth Paterson, Prof. Srdjan Capkun, Prof. David Basin, Dr. Jan Beutel, Dennis Jackson KU Leuven: Prof. Bart Preneel, Prof. Nigel Smart, Dr. Dave Singelee, Dr. Aysajan Abidin TU Delft: Prof. Seda Gürses University College London: Dr. Michael Veale CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security: Prof. Cas Cremers, Prof. Michael Backes, Dr. Nils Ole Tippenhauer University of Oxford: Dr. Reuben Binns University of Torino / ISI Foundation: Prof. Ciro Cattuto Aix Marseille Univ, Université de Toulon, CNRS, CPT: Dr. Alain Barrat University of Salerno: Prof. Giuseppe Persiano IMDEA Software: Prof. Dario Fiore University of Porto (FCUP) and INESC TEC: Prof. Manuel Barbosa Stanford University: Prof. Dan Boneh In this repository you will find various documents defining our specification. The white paper is accompanied by an overview of the data protection aspects of the design, and a three page simplified introduction to the protocol. In line with the aims of the project, we seek feedback from a broad audience on the high-level design, its security and privacy properties, and the functionality it offers, so that further protection mechanisms can be added to correct weaknesses. We feel it is essential that designs be made public so the community as a whole can verify the claimed privacy guarantees before applications are deployed. Open source implementations for iOS, Android, and the back-end server are available in other DP-3T repositories. The DP-3T app developed for Switzerland is publicly available Android and iOS and can be used as the basis for other apps An explanatory comic available in many languages. We publish our privacy and security analysis of specific and general proximity tracing systems. We have published a guidebook to privacy and security risks of the entire spectrum of digital proximity tracing tools, an analysis of PEPP-PT-NTK, and an analysis of PEPP-PT-ROBERT. We have also published proposals for and an analysis of mechanisms for upload authorisation. In 2022, we published a retrospective analysis of the deployment of decentralised proximity tracing systems, "Deploying Decentralised, Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing" as Troncoso et al., 2022, available open access here and mirrored on this repository. Contact email: dp3t@groupes.epfl.ch. Joint Statement DP-3T is listed as one of several privacy-preserving decentralized approaches to contact tracing in a joint statement from over 300 scientists from over 25 countries. The open letter is available here. Apple / Google Exposure Notification Apple and Google released a joint specification describing their system support for a privacy-preserving exposure notification system on iOS and Android. Their proposal is very similar to our early proposal "Low-cost decentralized proximity tracing". DP-3T appreciates the endorsement of these two companies for our solution and has been working with both of them to implement our app on their platforms. The Google / Apple Exposure Notification system is still evolving, in particular, the calibration of the measurement of attenuation values and duration of exposure between iOS and Android and between different phone models is still incomplete. In this phase, we have set our attenuation and duration thresholds conservatively to reduce false positives. We will evolve these thresholds as calibration improves. We also strongly believe that Apple and Google should adopt our subsequent enhancements, detailed in our white paper, that increase user privacy. We also strongly encourage both companies to allow an external audit of their code to ensure its functionality corresponds to its specification. Funding The DP3T project is not funded by Google or Apple. All of the funding project’s expenses have come from Prof. James Larus’s discretionary funds at EPFL, in anticipation of a grant from the Botnar Foundation. Two researchers involved with the project have received funding from Google in the past. In 2019, Prof. Carmela Troncoso received a Google Security and Privacy Research Award. In 2015, Prof. Edouard Bugnion’s student received a Google PhD Fellowship. In addition, Prof. Mathias Payer received a bug bounty for finding a 0day exploit. No participants were funded by Apple. April 8th, 2020: The relationship between DP-3T and PEPP-PT Please note that since this announcement, DP-3T partners have resigned from the PEPP-PT initiative. The Decentralised Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP-3T) project is an open protocol for COVID-19 proximity tracing using Bluetooth Low Energy functionality on mobile devices that ensures personal data and computation stays entirely on an individual's phone. It was produced by a core team of over 25 scientists and academic researchers from across Europe. It has also been scrutinized and improved by the wider community. DP-3T is a free-standing
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

29 sources
ABoredBirb·Aug 18, 2021
Longtime HN lurker here, finally something I can chime in on, as I was involved with the development of the Covid19 tracing app for my country. > limited deployment – any technology requires a sufficiently high number of users; Sure, yes, that's true for anything. > security and privacy concerns – many weaknesses and privacy leakages are documented I am yet to hear of any such cases, when it comes to tracing apps based on the google/apple tracing API. > lack of reliability – BLE-based apps are prone to errors due to the usage of signal-strength measure- ments to infer contacts; We did extensive testing and the only issues we found was that BLE couldn't tell distance very accurately, but still, we could, with high enough confidence, tell that two phones were within 5m of each other or so. There was also the issue of BLE
Read the rest
signal going through walls, which meant you might get a false positive with a neighbor, by placing your phone next to a wall, but that's really an edge case. > data governance – there exists a double standard in governing users’ location data, with fine-grained tracking of device location available only to private companies such as Google or Apple Plain false. Apps based on the API do not have users location data, only proximity data and even that is only stored on the users device and never transmitted elsewhere. GApple covid19 tracing api is based on the DP-3T tracing protocol, the (very human readable) whitepaper of which can be read here: https://github.com/DP-3T/documents/blob/master/DP3T%20White%... There was a lot of disinformation regarding contact tracing apps, both from tin-foil hat wearers, incompetent (or maybe corrupt?) state officials as well as competing, centralized (and actually privacy-breaching) solutions. I can still see a lot of this going around.
In 5G and Beyond for Contact Tracing
sschueller·May 8, 2020
Here is the approach Switzerland it taking [2]. All open source and decentralised privacy-preserving. Available for any other state to use. It is the responsibility of the app user to get tested or quarantine themselves if the app shows you have been in contact. No central authority knows who you have been in contact with or who you are. The installation of the App will also most likely be voluntary. [1] https://github.com/DP-3T/documents [2] https://github.com/DP-3T/dp3t-app-android-ch
In NHS open-sources contract tracing iOS and Android apps
Reelin·Apr 27, 2020
For those interested, the DP-3T papers can be found on their GitHub (https://github.com/DP-3T/documents). Apple has also published a preliminary specification of their protocol (https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing/) if you'd like to compare. I'd like to mention the TCN Protocol here (https://github.com/TCNCoalition/TCN), another very similar specification. I bring it up because the readme goes into quite a bit of (easily understandable!) detail regarding the trust assumptions of such a protocol and associated rationale. Ultimately I think Apple and Google are right to omit record upload and authentication concerns from the base protocol. The low level implementation should be as interoperable and generalized as possible in order to facilitate immediate uptake and maximum reusability. Higher level concerns such as who to trust and
Read the rest
how to interact with users can be handled by the various app implementations.
In Germany flips to Apple-Google approach on smartphone contact tracing
Reelin·Apr 26, 2020
> like contact tracing APIs, however well-intentioned they may be I share many of the concerns you've expressed, but worrying about the contract tracing API that was recently put forward is (hopefully) unwarranted. A faithful implementation of the joint spec published by Apple and Google would preserve your anonymity until and unless you published your secret keys. Moreover, the overall design is cryptographically sound (unless I missed something recently?) and appears to be decentralized (at least in principle) so in theory you won't have to trust the behavior of any binary blobs unless you choose to do so. For more insight into the design (and security) of such systems, you might take a look at the TCN protocol (https://github.com/TCNCoalition/TCN) or the DP-3T protocol (https://github.com/DP-3T/documents).
In Japan to subsidize 100% of salaries at small companies
jka·Apr 18, 2020
This article makes good points about the challenges involved in encouraging widespread application adoption in the face of recent mistrust of tech companies. It will likely require strong and clear messaging from authorities -- backed up by experts and the facts -- to persuade large enough percentages of national populations to adopt contact tracing apps for them to be effective. From what I've seen and read so far, I like the sound of the approach that Covid Watch[1] is taking. It's backed by reputable institutions, is open source (alleviating potential security and trust concerns from software experts), and does include healthcare agencies in the verification loop when cases are reported. Although some technologists might argue for fully decentralized solutions, I'd argue that ensuring that a healthcare agency is in-the-loop is importan
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t to avoid accidental and/or malignant false positive self-reports from users. DP-3T[2] also appears trustworthy and has a similar protocol design as far as I understand it. TCN[3] appears to be a good community rallying point for a number of these projects. And be careful of PEPP-PT: it looks potentially troublesome based on this[4] thorough and well-documented investigation. Their data protection policy[5] is archived in case it's useful to refer to in future. This comic[6] is also a really nice introduction to contact tracing protocols and TCN and DP-3T's proposals. [1] - https://www.covid-watch.org/ [2] - https://github.com/DP-3T/documents [3] - https://github.com/TCNCoalition/TCN [4] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22907499 [5] - https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.pepp-pt.org/datens... [6] - https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/
In Contact-tracing apps have a trust problem, even if they do protect your privacy
DennisP·Apr 17, 2020
In the U.S., the Supreme Court decided[1] in 2018 that the government couldn't access cell location data without a warrant. However, they made an exception for public safety: > Such exigencies include the need to pursue a fleeing suspect, protect individuals who are threatened with imminent harm or prevent the imminent destruction of evidence. Fighting a pandemic arguably falls into this category, since an awful lot of people are threatened with imminent harm. So we already have a constitutional standard for rolling back pandemic-related surveillance measures. Also, something this article overlooks about the Apple/Google system is that it does a pretty good job of protecting user privacy. Contacts are discovered by direct bluetooth contact, and central servers don't get any information from people except that they tested positive.[2][3] [
Read the rest
1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court... [2] https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/ [3] https://github.com/DP-3T/documents
In How the coronavirus is driving new surveillance programs globally

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