If you want to go to Qatar for the World Cup, you have to sacrifice your privacy. This is the conclusion of international experts dealing with measures related to the major event. The reasons for this are the Ehteraz and Hayya applications, which every football fan must install on their smartphone before arriving at Doha airport.
The German federal data protection agency urgently warns against these apps and recommends downloading them to a second mobile phone only “in an emergency”. Now Switzerland is also becoming active, as Blick found out when asked by the federal government. Federal Data Protection Commissioner Adrian Lobsiger, 62, says the comments from Germany would correspond to assessments by the Federal Office of Information Technology, which blocked the installation of two apps on federal employees’ official smartphones.
“Despite this background, I advise all Swiss travelers to Qatar for the World Cup to use a cheap custom smartphone.” Such devices are sold commercially for less than 100 francs. Lobsiger: “Another possibility would be to get a factory reset smartphone that is no longer needed.”
This happens when Qatar apps are installed on the smartphone
Ehteraz is an application officially dedicated to tracking Covid-19. It requires access to various functions, can read, modify and delete all content on a smartphone. Ehteraz also provides the state of Qatar with an overview of the exact location of the mobile phone and the ability to make calls directly from the phone. Even the screen lock can be disabled when etheraz is installed.
Experts warn that Hayya, an official World Cup app that allows free use of the Qatar metro, has completed full surveillance. Anyone who installs the app on their smartphone agrees that the mobile phone can be put to sleep at any time and that Qataris can see the phone’s network connections.
Lobsiger: “In general, I recommend that Swiss residents do not take data carriers where sensitive personal data is stored when traveling to countries that do not have similar data protection to Switzerland, such as Qatar.”