Reviving Tourism and User Privacy Via Blockchain-Based ID Systems

While many of these apps rely on bluetooth technology and data tracking through GPS signals, privacy concerns have created major setbacks.

Blockchain ensures data privacyAccording to KPMG's United States blockchain leader, Arun Ghosh, blockchain is key for ensuring data privacy and is an essential technology for the future.

"The great value in applying blockchain to data privacy is its ability to ensure that personal data sets are accurate, and separate, which is important to business users, without exposing the identity of the individual, which is important to consumers."

Blockchain-based contact-tracing apps are being developed in hopes of preserving user privacy while reviving the travel economy.

CEO of enterprise blockchain platform ShareRing, Tim Bos, told Cointelegraph he had plans to launch a travel product earlier this year using the company's digital identity solution.

"We wanted to do something similar to a contact tracing app, so we started to create a covid passport with the goal of respecting traveler's privacy. This isn't another way for governments or companies to gather user data based on their whereabouts."

A self-sovereign identity protocol sits on top of ShareRing's blockchain network.

If everything matches up, a digital user ID is generated and stored on the app with only a digital fingerprint of the information from the app being stored on ShareRing's blockchain, which according to Bos, "Has no information about the users, it just verifies a person's photo. Identity information is never stored on the blockchain and cannot be altered, preventing falsification and fraud."

Known as "VisitMe," this is a visitor management solution that runs on the ICON blockchain network.

Iconlopop CEO JH Kim told a Korean tech news outlet that the current pandemic has pushed many governments to violate privacy.