
WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me - ForHackernews
http://nautil.us/issue/73/play/wechat-is-watching
======
quotz
I would highly recommend following @0xDUDE on twitter, he always posts
surveillance leaks in China. He found out that WeChat conversations are sent
to the local police depending where the user is, and there are employee farms
manually reading the conversations... The same way factory workers in China
are paid 2 dollars a day, employee farms for conversation/data reading are
doing the same...

1\. Link for @0xDUDE is:
[https://twitter.com/0xdude?lang=en](https://twitter.com/0xdude?lang=en) 2\.
Link for a great thread regarding China spying:
[https://twitter.com/docligot/status/1111293482629398528?lang...](https://twitter.com/docligot/status/1111293482629398528?lang=en)

------
adinobro
A few things worth being aware of Alibaba does not own WeChat but rather's
it's competition Alipay. It does not have any access to WeChat data.

So far the "social credit" on seems to be mostly based on how much you buy and
it only seems to give you discounts to massively overpriced products (similar
to a credit card reward system).

You don't really download apps in Wechat but rather add a link more like a
Facebook App (JavaScript & HTML).

Chinese people tend to like one app that does everything. Most of the services
talked about in the article as separate services that you can open in WeChat
but you can also open most of them in AliPay or Taobao or access them directly
on their own websites. This is what Facebook tried to do but failed...

What I find fascinating is that a lot of older people that use WeChat in China
are illiterate apart from numbers. They do everything by remembering the
pictures and other people help them to set up their account. That is part of
the reason why they want a single app that does everything. You don't need to
read since you can just send messages, look at pictures and iconography.

Also, everyone in China still accepts cash but you generally need correct
change.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. I just found out my sesame-credit
score is 622 (not that it does anything...)

~~~
jstanley
> You don't need to read since you can just send messages

How can illiterate people send messages?

~~~
adinobro
There is a button that you hold down and it sends a voice message (up to 60
seconds). They generally just send voice messages back and forth.

There is also a + for extra features like: * Sending a photo * Sending a short
video * Calling * Money * Location

You don't need to be able to read to use any of them.

------
scilro
I find WeChat and its aggressively centralized model fascinating, and
something to keep eyes on, but this article falls into the familiar trap of
playing a bit loose with the facts when it comes to how the Chinese government
surveils its citizens.

For example, this is from article:

>People are regularly arrested for messages they send in supposedly “private”
group chats. In 2017, two people were arrested in Nanjing for separate
instances of making satirical comments referring the massacre in the city by
the Japanese in 1937.5

But if you read the original source:
[http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001901/more-nanjing-
massacre-...](http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001901/more-nanjing-massacre-
miscreants-detained-by-police)

>“Nanjing is a pit,” Wang wrote. “We should let the Japanese come slaughter
again.” Local police were alerted to the incident after screenshots of Wang’s
messages were circulated on social media, and they arrested him two days
later.

Clearly, a bit of a different story than what's implied in this article. I can
easily see someone being questioned by police in almost any country if
screenshots leaked where they joked about repeating a violent historical
atrocity, like 9/11 for example.

It's not clear to me why folks tend to advance the notion that Chinese
citizens are under constant 1984-style 24/7 surveillance by their government.
That's not quite how it works over there, at least, if people who live and
work there are to be trusted.

~~~
zachguo
I'm fed up with those people who think they understand China simply because
they have read a sci-fi novel written by an Englishman before modern China has
been founded. China's system is so complicated and so far from a heavy-handed
police state.

~~~
zwaps
I am neither American nor Chinese, but there is a qualitative difference.

In the USA, i can say whatever I damn please. In China, I can not talk about
certain topics. Whether or not both CCP and FBI bug my phone, I do not know.
However, China is super oppressive when it comes to freedom.

~~~
datumy
It sounds like you have never been to US or China.

~~~
zwaps
I have been, though.

------
dawhizkid
Why isn't anyone worried about TikTok?

Yes, WeChat is largely contained to China, but TikTok/ByteDance is global and
a top 10 app in the U.S. It would be naive to think that there isn't a
backdoor to that app. And it's video.

There's also precedence for this e.g. the U.S. forcing Grindr's Chinese owner
to sell.

~~~
majia
It seems you don’t have a good idea about what a backdoor is. A tiktok app
can’t spy on your email or Facebook message.

It’s reasonable to worry about whatever data you give tiktok, but you should
probably worry a lot more about Facebook or google which collects far more
private data.

~~~
dawhizkid
You can DM people on TikTok just like most other social networking apps.

------
ssnistfajen
Facebook, Google, and Apple would all do the same thing WeChat/AliPay did if
regulations in the West moved faster and were more accommodating.

Nobody mandated the author to order delivery, follow social media, buy movie
tickets, do online shopping, pay rent, use bikeshare, call cabs, etc, etc,
etc. through WeChat. They are, for the most part, services owned by companies
other than Tencent. WeChat just compiles a giant menu for users to link their
accounts from these services into WeChat. These gateways exist because
consumers find it more convenient than quitting WeChat and opening another
app/website.

It's perfectly healthy to be concerned about the impact of centralized tech
giants on our daily lives but so far all I'm seeing is fearmongering about
this ever-more-elusive "dystopia" which coincidentally seems to only exist in
a place that's easy for the English-speaking world to hate on.

~~~
RandomGuyDTB
If every one of my friends and even my employer used an app to conduct
business and I refused to get it no matter how much they tried to tell me to
because I was concerned about my privacy I'd be ostracized. This _did_ happen
to me with Facebook to an extent, and Facebook isn't nearly as much of a
mammoth as WeChat. Stop pretending it's a choice.

~~~
ssnistfajen
Why did you assume I "pretended" it's a choice? It IS a choice and it has
always been. Most people just decided the trade-off of being denied employment
and other opportunities is not worth preserving whatever privacy these tech
giants are trying to "steal" from you. Market economies rarely cater to the
few. That has always been the exception and not the norm.

~~~
danShumway
By that line of reasoning, I have a choice of whether or not to hand over my
wallet when someone mugs me -- I've just decided that the tradeoff of getting
a knife in my stomach is not worth whatever money is being stolen from me.

What you're proposing is an interesting philosophical argument, but not a
particularly useful way to think when building a society. We're trying to
limit Hobson's Choices, even if we can't completely eliminate them all the
time.

------
n1000
Going to China soon and everybody tells me WeChat will help me a lot over
there. However, I cannot create my account without a "voiceprint". It wants me
to read some numbers to fingerprint my voice. Apparently I cannot skip this
step and I am not very comfortable with that.

~~~
adinobro
I actually find Alipay easier to use for payments and it is easier to set up.
If you don't want to chat I would use it instead.

~~~
markplindsay
Can you set up Alipay with a non-Chinese bank account or card?

It works great for Chinese people and foreign residents of the PRC who have a
bank account. However, my experience as a tourist was that it was impossible
to link my US credit card using the PRC version of the app downloaded while in
China.

~~~
ubercow13
Yes I tried recently and it seemed impossible without a bank account. You can
link a foreign card but not actually use it for normal payments. You may be
able to use it only on tabao or something. WeChat pay is not usable at all
without a Chinese bank card.

~~~
adinobro
I think you are right. I only used a foreign card for Taobao. I don't think it
works for normal purchase...

I'll try it tomorrow and see if it works.

------
jagrsw
There's a great Polish sci-fi novel - Paradyzja (~/Paradise/) (wiki:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradyzja](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradyzja))
which describes ever-eavesdropped society. In the end, the society develops a
metalanguage
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koalang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koalang))
to evade automatic systems which record and analyze all written and spoken
communications (even at peoples' homes).

I wonder if WeChat users already developed something similar.

~~~
max_im
It's definitely getting closer to that point - for example winnie the pooh is
a popular meme used to make fun of uncle Xi but it's hard to police given that
it's a children's cartoon. It hasn't stopped the aggressive censoring of
pictures of winnie the pooh (no joke) but it has definitely presented a
challenge. Using vague historical anecdotes and rarely used imagery is a
traditional Chinese mode of communication - in modern days you can see it in
action via the aggressively close reading people do of CCP mouthpiece
newspapers - the use of certain terms signal a greater ideological shift which
people will then try to adapt to/guess at. Personally I'm curious about how
this mode of communication will evolve given the current development of
automated policing algorithms which will undoubtedly take context into
account.

------
test1235
How is the Chinese government with regards to IT quality?

I've come to believe that most governments are inept when it comes to the
management, security and general quality of their software.

With the government holding so much critical information, it seems a very
obvious and valuable target for hackers.

~~~
adinobro
WeChat is a private company owned by Tencent.

~~~
rtpg
I mean.... the govt can check whatever they want on the WeChat logs. And the
populace is pretty accepting of this for security reasons (if you aren’t going
off the “government can be corrupt and abuse it’s powers” principle its
actually kinda hard to make the privacy argument!)

~~~
adinobro
I didn't say anything about privacy just that it is a private company.

It doesn't seem that different to the US government with AT&T.

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130901/23253224379/att-h...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130901/23253224379/att-
has-employees-embedded-govt-providing-near-realtime-searches-nearly-every-
phone-call.shtml)

~~~
adamsea
It is different because in China I doubt there would have been any
investigative reporting about the government and AT&T.

And while AT&T doesn’t seem to have done this, other companies such as Apple
have enacted privacy measures which directly contravene the stated wishes of
the government - but which are legal.

In China, I believe the way it works is, whatever the government wants becomes
legal. The US is far from perfect but the rule of law exists here to some
degree.

~~~
adinobro
One of the biggest and more interesting difference is that the US government
wants to keep these things secret and investigative reporting finds them.

In China, they want this information public because they want people to know
that they know and self regulate - Panopticon.

The cynic in me looks at the US as a country controlled by companies while
China is a country that controls companies. I don't know if it makes that much
of a difference any more now that companies are almost the same size as
countries.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The only optimal solution for the little guy is complete privacy, or complete
transparency, where everyone has equal access to all information. Complete
privacy is evidently not achievable, therefore the only option left is
complete transparency.

Either way, the current reality of some lucky individuals having all the
access to everyone’s information, whether it’s Chinese government or companies
or US government or companies is the worst situation to be in if you have
little power, i.e. 99.9999999% of people who aren’t billionaires/nation state
level diplomats.

------
_sveq
I go to China often but it's been two years now. I don't look forward to the
next visit for this very reason—I'll need this to pay for any and everything.
I'm not going back.

~~~
catherd
Cash still works exactly the way it always has, (almost) nobody is going to
turn down your business because you don't pay by an app.

~~~
markplindsay
I was in China (Beijing and Wenzhou) in April. I had NO success finding a taxi
in Beijing—the only way to get a ride was to use an app like Didi Chuxing.

I was able to install and use it just fine. The problem was that it is
impossible to link a non-PRC payment method to it. The same is true for WeChat
Pay or Alipay—you've got to use a Chinese bank account or card as a source. I
was not able to find a way around this despite over an hour of experimenting
with the apps.

In contrast, it was easy to get taxis in Wenzhou. The drivers all initially
asked for electronic payment, though, so it's probably only a matter of
regulation that is preventing them from going cashless.

~~~
adinobro
If you want to get a real taxi use Baidu maps. It is in Chinese but you can
just drop a pin where you want to go and ask for a real taxi instead of a
Didi.

A Chinese person can show you the buttons to press then you can pay with cash.

~~~
markplindsay
I'm pretty sure I tried this—I think the prompts were even in English, if I'm
remembering correctly. However, I gave up after several tries of it looking
for a taxi and not finding one while I was standing in the rain on a dark
street corner. It would sit and look for minutes and appeared to be a broken
feature.

I ended up taking a BRT line to get back to my hotel and it was great. All of
my experiences with transit in Beijing were excellent. I just wish taxis or
car services were an option for tourists.

------
hn23
So compared to this Google looks like a mom and pop shop when it comes to data
collection..but now think about the frame here. It is done in China not in the
/free/ world..

~~~
ggg2
yes.

nobody complained when US (and everyone else later on) required online forms
for visa requests. full of google Analytics tags and all.

~~~
afjl
This is not true at all. There was an incredible amount of dissatisfaction and
anger about this decision. In my own household, we discussed the implications
of that decision. Please read through the comments on these 2 posts:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20075608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20075608)

------
ConfusedDog
> If it wasn’t for the fact that I grew up in London and use a VPN to jump the
> great firewall to keep in touch with my friends at home and use Google, I
> could go entire days without leaving WeChat.

I wonder what VPN people use in China to access Google. When I was there last
month, I couldn't find a single one that worked for more than a few days.

~~~
arnvald
I've been to China a couple of times and ExpressVPN works most of the time for
me. However the most reliable way to have a decent connection was Algo VPN
deployed to AWS. It was far superior both in terms of reliability and in terms
of speed.

~~~
ubercow13
I tried this recently (Algo with wireguard) and it was probably the most
reliable way, but still blocked very quickly on some ISPs, for example it
never worked through my China Telecom phone.

------
temporory
>WeChat knows what I am reading. It would discover I am doing research for
this article.

Hate to say it, but this is the same with Facebook. The only difference is the
government aspect. I think all social products ultimately aim for this. I can
definitely see Facebook heading this direction very soon.

------
foozed
> It knows my biometric information; it knows the very contours of my face.

I was under the impression that Face ID does not leak such information to
whatever app is using it?

~~~
NotPaidToPost
This has nothing to do with FaceID, which isn't mentioned in the article.

WeChat has its own face recognition system.

~~~
foozed
Ah ok, i thought the author meant FaceID in the passage:

> I have my WeChat linked with the facial recognition scanner on my iPhone

was not aware that WeChat has its own system. They don't get to use the
"special" FaceID sensors/scanners though right? Just the camera?

~~~
_ui4r
It looks like depth data can be accessed through the AVFoundation framework
provided by Apple.

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/camer...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/cameras_and_media_capture/streaming_depth_data_from_the_truedepth_camera)

------
canada_dry
What's better... being in China knowing that everything you do is being
watched, or living elsewhere and just suspecting that everything you do is
being watched by some three letter agency?

> (Tencent declined to comment for this article)

More likely: (I didn't dare to request comment from Tencent or my social
credit score would have plummeted).

------
netsharc
A while ago I ran a thought experiment, Facebook could also track things like
this. If my phone spent the night not at home, it can probably surmise that my
relationship with (person who I've been exchanging FB/WhatsApp messages with
increasing frequency the last few weeks) has progressed to the next level.
Especially if it can see the phone spent the night connected to their SSID,
but with both of us having zero interactions with FB apps.

Is there FB analytics built into Netflix? Then they could even say what we
watched on Netflix that night.

A machine learning bot that can write just the right thing to a potential date
is probably doable, albeit creepy. It's even easier if the bot can see their
entire social media and IM history...

~~~
mtrovo
Where there's a way there's a will.

So say US has interest on country X, can you 100% guarantee that none of the
following data could be used to target some individuals of said country: \-
Facebook social graph \- WhatsApp conversations \- Skype voice and video chats
\- Google location history \- visa credit card transactions

IMHO it's just a matter of how big is the interest. Maybe it wouldn't happen
to use this data for personal reasons but it would be very strange to imagine
an army leader citing foreigners personal data protection when the country is
at war.

------
evidencepi
I posted a bunch of pictures from the Hong Kong protests in the past couple
days.

It shocked me that all of my posts were blocked immediately, people can see my
old posts but not those new posts with the "sensitive" pictures.

I downloaded those pictures from bloomberg, so I am sure the wechat / tencent
is running some web crawler and ML to identify the news picture from the
online sources and block them automatically. Still there is some way to get
around, by assembling a group of pictures together and adding some noise
(adding words, etc).

What's more, the regime is not only monitoring wechat or weibo, it's
monitoring non-domestic social medias like twitter as well, for example here's
a pictures showing a huge screen, where a lot of tweets are being process my
some NLP algorithm, and outputs a result showing whether the tweet is
positive, neutral or negative towards the regime [1].

This is how a totalitarianism would apply technology, it uses everything it
could to control the people in order to survive.

China is now going full throttle to become a nazi + commie country, it's THE
CANCER for everyone else who loves freedom and democracy.

There will be only two possibilities in the 21st century, either the Communist
China crashed like USSR, or a war will happen between the China and the west.
Hong Kong is literally the frontline of the battlefield.

[1]
[https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2018/09/%E3%80%90%E7%A...](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2018/09/%E3%80%90%E7%AB%8B%E6%AD%A4%E5%AD%98%E7%85%A7%E3%80%91%E8%80%81%E5%A4%A7%E5%93%A5%E6%AD%A3%E5%9C%A8%E7%9C%8B%E4%BD%A0%E7%9A%84%E6%8E%A8%E6%96%87%EF%BC%9F%EF%BC%81%E8%AF%B7%E5%A4%9A%E5%8F%91/)

~~~
evidencepi
I think it will take a long time for the west to really stand up against
china, because of the economy interest, the lack of transparency and culture /
language barrier. Until china hits the pearl harbor, it will get worse and
worse.

Disclaimer: I am from china, living in the US now.

------
kylegordon
'It knows my biometric information; it knows the very contours of my face.'

The iPhone does, WeChat doesn't.

~~~
mstaoru
Nope, in this case the camera is run by Wechat and they have their own
biometric database.

~~~
m2zyi
FaceID or TouchID 's information is truely own by IPhone,Wechat use camera can
only take photo or video,but when u login, speak six number to wechat,this is
own by Wechat.

~~~
mstaoru
Both Alipay and Wechat Pay have those fancy terminals now in coffee shops,
where you need to smile to the camera to pay. No iPhone involved. To set it up
they use the same database as for the account verification.

------
qwerty456127
BTW do Chinese phones let you turn GPS off? I never turn it on except when I
actually need it so apps probably don't know where I am.

~~~
millettjon
They can still track you to some extent from cell towers and wifi.

------
La-ang
what about Wechat tracking you even though when not using its features? I
don't think CPC would patiently wait until you launch the app to start logging
your behavior.

~~~
adinobro
Why bother? They already have access to cell phone location data and meta
information. I'm sure in China it is direct access. In the US it is a two-step
process. Not that it would make much difference in practice.

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130901/23253224379/att-h...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130901/23253224379/att-
has-employees-embedded-govt-providing-near-realtime-searches-nearly-every-
phone-call.shtml)

There was a great article in Australia about this a few years back:
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-16/metadata-retention-
pr...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-16/metadata-retention-privacy-
phone-will-ockenden/6694152)

------
jcbrand
> At 9:27, once I’ve brushed my teeth, answered a few messages, and wiped the
> sleep from my eyes, I order a coffee through WeChat. There’s a payments
> window on the app, and when you click on it you see various options, some
> proprietary to WeChat and some which are independent apps that run on
> WeChat’s platform. I open the Meituan delivery app and scroll through all
> the coffee options around me. I order an Americano. I have my WeChat linked
> with the facial recognition scanner on my iPhone; when I pay, I just hold my
> phone up to my face and a green tick flicks across the screen. Seven minutes
> later, I get a message telling me the coffee is on the way, with the name
> and number of the delivery driver. It arrives at 9:53.

Is it too much effort to just make your own coffee in your own apartment? Does
that now also have to be delivered to you? The amount of waste involved in
this just boggles my mind.

~~~
sergiomattei
Uh... What?

It's the reason Starbucks exists. People are on the go, and they don't want to
make their own coffee.

This is literally the same as going to the corner coffee shop to buy a
Frappuccino.

~~~
yborg
If the corner coffee shops took 26 minutes to get me a cup of coffee I'd
probably have to give it up entirely if I was really too lazy to spend the 90
seconds of effort in my kitchen that gives me a cup of coffee in about 5
minutes.

~~~
close04
> It arrives at 9:53

If you can count on that arrival time (within minutes), you can just time it
so it coincides with you getting out the door. No need to worry about
forgetting the pot on the stove, or noisy grinders, etc. It's more likely
you'll make a mistake in the morning especially if you're not a morning person
and you're still half asleep and in a hurry.

There's something for everyone.

~~~
CandyFace
This is why coffee machines with timers were invented.

5 min before I go to bed, all I have to do is prepare the coffee and pour
water, then press the button to activate at the preferred time interval. At
7:15 am the machine will start and there we go, coffee ready. The machine also
turns itself off within 45 min, so you never risk leaving anything running.

------
Iwan-Zotow
looks exactly like fecebook to me

------
floor_
Not to be confused with WeeChat. The curses terminal irc client.

~~~
dewey
Would anyone really be confused by that?

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
What an unintended consequence. Was there any way to have seen it?

~~~
ajxs
Is this comment a joke?

~~~
292355744930110
They are more like intended consequences.

