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Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing -- Documents

24Distinct people
29Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
2.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

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…

the_mitsuhiko used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

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

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:02:44 AM 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
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
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

1 sources
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

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