Yonhap News reports that South Korea is taking an interesting approach to protecting people’s privacy while requiring them to provide some personal information in case it is needed for contact tracing in the pandemic. The new encrypted number system will continue until the pandemic is over. The person gets a unique 6-character identifier by using one of three systems. The identifier consists of 4 numbers and 2 letters, so when the person goes out somewhere, they can write down their unique 6-character identifier instead of their unique identifier instead of their personal phone number. The government had already eliminated the requirement that people write down their name, replacing it instead with part of the individual’s home address.
In the event of a data breach, then, the individual’s partial address and a unique identifier would be at risk, but not their name, full contact details, etc.
This sounds like a smart idea.
Read more on Yonhap News.