BC Covid-19 Survey gets quite personal

Public

The BC Covid-19 Survey has just been launched and people can participate until the end of May 2020.

The survey takes longer than the 10-15 minutes claimed and while the survey does allow people to answer anonymously and answer only the questions they wish to, it does include a number of questions that reveal a lot of private personal information including the individual's PHN if they wish.

Maybe a meta-analysis of the results can be undertaken to explore the extent to which participants divulge personal information including their postal code (residential block), income, age, occupation, health problems and other details. Are there differences between age groups in how much is revealed and are there differences when participants are in a heightened state of health concern?

Is this another example of using the time of Covid-19 concerns and going too far and eroding personal privacy, just as other initiatives are using the Covid-19 backdrop to go too far; Provincial Government and Health Authorities push to change BC College licensing categories for physicians, telephone companies selling cell phone location data, tech giants introducing bluetooth and proximity tracking, and more.

Yes, answering the BC Covid-19 Survey questions with extra care and attention to preserving personal privacy may be a useful way to help the government further its understanding of this health crisis, but these hazardous pitfalls to disclosure of personal information in the survey could have been avoided in the first place.

http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/diseases-conditions/covid-19/covid-19-su...