Governments are increasingly using cellphone location data to manage the coronavirus

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread around the world, more governments are relying on mobile carrier data to track everything from patients who should be isolated to how well people are following limited-movement edicts.

Mobile carriers in the European Union are sharing data with health authorities in Italy, Germany, and Austria to help monitor whether people are following instructions to maintain social distances and stay close to home during the outbreak, Reuters reports.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, limits how companies can share and manage customers’ personal data. The location data currently being shared by cellphone providers is anonymous and aggregated, per the GDPR rules. In Italy’s...

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