Most European countries have now passed the peak of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic—and are pondering how to begin opening up their economies after weeks of strict lockdown. Herd immunity, which the UK once hoped might lessen the chances of a devastating second wave in the fall, is still a long ways off.

The WHO recently warned that only 2 or 3% of the global population has developed antibodies against the virus, a figure which would have to be nearer to 60% to provide protection in the absence of a vaccine.

Hopes to mitigate the virus’s spread are now turning to technology: especially to apps which could trace the contacts an infected person has had. Many of these digital solutions, like France’s StopCovid, are based on an app which Singapore used to flatten its own curve.

They follow a basic principle—tracking an individual’s contacts and informing them if they’ve been in close proximity to someone who later tests positive for Covid-19.

Only a few months ago, the prospect of apps monitoring who people come in contact with would have been unthinkable in Europe, long known for its rigid privacy regulations.

Even as public health officials have warned that tracing coronavirus patients’ contacts is an essential component of curbing infection rates, fifteen MPs from France’s ruling La République en Marche party called for a debate on technologies which “question our fundamental freedoms”.

Under the exceptional circumstances, however, European policymakers are trying to devise apps which infringes on people’s privacy as little as possible. One step in this direction is making the use of coronavirus apps voluntary—though roughly 75% of the population would need to download them in order for them to be effective.

Another concession to privacy rights is using Bluetooth technology to recognise other devices which have come within a certain range, rather than tracking all of a person’s movements through GPS. Indeed, the European Commission has specifically warned member states not to collect location data as part of efforts to trace the disease’s spread.

Key, too, is ensuring that data collected by the app is anonymised. As the CEO of one tech firm working on Germany’s tracing project put it, “what really matters [is] to build an app that traces the virus, not the human”.

Guidance from the European Commission has emphasized that public health authorities should not be able to identify individual users from the data they store, and that databases should only store arbitrary identifiers.

Messages informing people that they’ve been exposed to the virus should be automated, and users’ phone numbers should by no means be collected in a centralised system.

Just as people have accepted increased scrutiny while travelling after terrorist attacks, thoughtfully designed coronavirus tracing apps may be an infringement of privacy which citizens are willing to allow in order to return to somewhat normal lives.

With privacy issues in the spotlight thanks to the debate over Covid apps, however, it’s the perfect time to question other parts of our daily lives which are encroaching on our privacy.

Contactless payment, for example, has become a feature of European life, cherished for its speed and ease. In some EU countries, such as the Czech Republic, contactless payments, whether by card or a service like Apple Pay, now make up over 90% of all Point of Sale transactions.

Far too little attention, however, has been paid to the potential privacy issues posed by this shift towards digital payments.

On a concrete level, contactless cards and mobile wallets on smartphones have a number of vulnerabilities which leave them open to hacking.

In December 2019, for example, two security researchers in London demonstrated how to circumvent payment limits on contactless cards and pointed out flaws in the cryptographic protocol behind contactless payments allowing them to be cloned.

More broadly, digital payments are allowing companies to build up a treasure trove of information about them and their spending. Paying with cash may not be as convenient as a quick tap of a card, but cash is anonymous and doesn’t leave traces.

Habitual card payments, meanwhile, build a network of where we travel, what we buy and when we buy it, what we eat and what we do for fun.

This data is worth its weight in gold to corporations, which can exploit this remarkably detailed picture of consumers’ preferences and habits to fine-tune marketing.

In a similar vein, it’s become increasingly clear that smart home products have opened up a Pandora’s box of privacy issues and offered companies like Amazon an intimate window into our lives. Europeans have snapped up the devices—for two years in a row, Amazon has sold out of its Alexa-enabled Echo speakers in the run-up to Christmas.

Europe’s enthusiasm for the smart speakers comes despite horror stories about the devices spontaneously turning themselves on, recording people’s daily lives, and in some cases sending those audio recordings to contacts—or even to strangers.

These apparent glitches are alarming—but not as disconcerting as the prospect that the companies behind these devices are using them to collect a mass of data.

Companies including Google and Amazon deploy human contractors to manually review audio recordings for quality and to train the digital assistants. While these recordings are supposedly anonymized, in many cases they may still include enough personal information to identify the speaker.

Partnerships like that which Amazon sealed with the UK’s NHS to transmit health advice over the Echo speaker raise the spectre of the tech company building a profile of users’ health information.

Amazon has repeatedly insisted that its devices are not “always listening”. Its previous patent applications for algorithms which would analyse conversations in order to better target advertising, however, have called this into question.

Europeans may be willing to rein in their zeal for protecting privacy in order to help governments trace Covid-19’s path through the population. They should be less willing to hand financial service firms and tech conglomerates a roadmap to their tastes and routines in the name of convenience.