AfterDawn: News

WhatsApp competitor confirms: All data is revealed to Chinese government

It has been revealed that the messaging platform WeChat, owned by the Chinese technology giant Tencent, shares all its data with the government, Moneycontrol.com reports.

Chinese government is known for limiting access to online content and surveilling its citizens closely so it shouldn't come as a surprise but nonetheless seems egregious even from them.



Even though the messaging service is not among the most used in the U.S., or Europe for that matter, it has over 650 million users. It's the third largest messaging platform after WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. As one might imagine most of its users are in China or surrounding countries but plenty of westeners use the service as well.

The sharing of data with the Chinese government was revealed from the company's new privacy policy. Updating the software requires accepting the new policy so this means that every single message can be accessed by the government from now on.

The Chinese government has made it clear that it will hold individuals responsible for example group chats that spread information that is deemed questionable.

Unlike WeChat, the most popular messaging platform WhatsApp offers end-to-end encryption that makes it (nearly) impossible for anyone except the sender and recipient to read the message.



Written by: Matti Robinson @ 25 Sep 2017 13:20

• Previous article

• Xbox 360's Halo titles now compatible with Xbox One

• Next article

• Apple's former GPU partner sold for $740 million

• 2 comments

• borhan9

  I do not think I will be using this service anymore :)
  If they do not have any encryption then is risky.
  Bye Bye WeChat from Me.
  

  Edited by DVDBack23
  
  
  "the mediocre teacher tells. the good teacher explains. the superior teacher demonstrates. the great teacher inspires."- William Aruthur Ward
  Website: http://www.ampleblaze.com

  25.9.2017 23:40 #1

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by borhan9: I do not think I will be using this service anymore :)
  If they do not have any encryption then is risky.
  Bye Bye WeChat from Me. It's a Chinese 'company', of course they give the government whatever they want. That's just how 'companies' in China work. Even foreign companies in China do this; that's a big part of the reason Google isn't in China anymore. If you don't want your data handed over to the Chinese government then don't use any service from China. It's probably a bad idea to trust non-Chinese services that operate inside China as well. For example, Apple works with the Chinese government to reduce access to VPN's...it isn't a huge leap to handing over data from "enemies of the state" such as peaceful protestors, the Dali Lama (who is considered a terrorist in China), etc.
  
  Really the only news here is that they made the mistake of telling the public; I'm guessing that the CCP is less than happy about that.

  7.10.2017 11:20 #2