
WeChat confirms it makes all private user data available to Chinese government - spyformeandyou
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/wechat-confirms-that-it-makes-all-private-user-data-available-to-the-chinese-government-2391847.html
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strayamaaate
The Chinese government would not allow WeChat to exist if this weren’t the
case. They already have a difficult job managing Tencent, which is arguably
China’s second in command after the Party. You don’t get that big without some
serious concessions.

I use WeChat every day, but I hesitate momentarily before writing anything
negative about the Chinese Govt... just in case.

I suppose they’ve done their job.

~~~
KGIII
Indeed. They don't need to restrict speech or monitor much, when they've
convinced people to censor themselves. If I lived in an area that was
repressive, I'd probably make sure I never said anything bad about the
government.

One of the things I like about my country is that I can call my government out
when they make bad choices and I can even organize a protest to show my
displeasure.

~~~
strayamaaate
As an Aussie, I don’t necessarily want to overthrow my government (what’s a
circus without the clowns), but I do like the fact I can safely voice my
displeasure if and when I feel it’s useful.

Having moved to Taiwan after spending many years in Beijing, the feeling of a
weight being lifted off is palpable. I don’t miss those towering windowless
soviet-style government building one bit.

~~~
KGIII
I have traveled a great deal and seen some pretty oppressed people. I can live
most anywhere and one of the reasons I choose to live here is because I am not
oppressed here.

Like you, I have no desire to overthrow my government. I do like to complain
about then, however.

As for living somewhere oppressive, I don't think I'd do well in a place where
I was hopeless. I'd probably end up being a dead revolutionary, just because I
would have wanted to feel hope.

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virtuabhi
Here is the Amnesty International study mentioned in article -
[https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/10/which-
me...](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/10/which-messaging-
apps-best-protect-your-privacy/) Also posted here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314670)

Tencent WeChat QQ 0/100\. Hopeless.

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redthrow
What about the Kik messenger that has a large investment from Tencent, the
creator of WeChat?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kik_Messenger](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kik_Messenger)

 _Company CEO Ted Livingston stated Kik 's aspirations to become "the WeChat
of the West" and said that attracting younger users was an important part of
the company's strategy_

~~~
Hongwei
It's very unlikely that the Chinese government can force Kik to share data
through a minority investment from Tencent. Their power is limited to behind
their great firewall.

I also find it inconceivable that Ted @ Kik would do this. Disclosure: I've
known him for years

------
mtgx
Working link:

[http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/wechat-c...](http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/wechat-
confirms-that-it-makes-all-private-user-data-available-to-the-chinese-
government-2391847.html)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the link from
[http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/wechat-c...](http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/wechat-
confirms-that-it-makes-all-private-user-data-available-to-the-chinese-
government-2391847.html/).

------
mads
Some time ago, I wechat messaged a link to a domain I just registered. I had
the Apache access log open by chance and could see that along with my friend
visiting the link, there were numerous other devices accessing it. From the
IP, I could tell they were mobile phones from the same city I was in and a big
city nearby (in China).

Could be interesting to make a more "controlled experiment".

~~~
baybal2
All links sent through Wx are crawled by a communist program looking for
reactionary sentiments

~~~
mads
Yes, I imagine they are. The devices visiting the link were mobile phones
however (I remember seeing a Samsung phone specifically). Maybe the crawler is
posing as random device models.

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EZ-E
The police HAS direct access. The group chats in particular are monitored. One
recent story is that a man criticized police for, doing random alcohol tests
on car drivers. Got arrested along with the group chat admin

------
Asdfbla
Wonder how their surveillance infrastructure works. Do they duplicate all data
and pipe it into some government datacenter? Or do they have some surveillance
boxes installed on-site that just scan the data for certain keywords (like the
NSA supposedly often did it)? Maybe the latter seems more likely since
filtering the data first makes the overhead more manageable.

~~~
pas
Probably the same way Facebook makes data available to LEOs. There's a portal
for that. They upload the warrant, they then get access to stuff.

WeChat simply skips the warrant checking and request scoping.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It is worse in that any random local official has full access. There was a
huge scandal a while back where a Hainan local official was paid off to make
negative comments go away for a bunch of private businesses.

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yladiz
Is this surprising? I've known for a long time that WeChat chats and data
could be read by the Chinese government, given that they censor the chats in
real time and the close ties between Tencent and Beijing. I guess it's nice to
be confirmed but it was already a given considering it's a Chinese company.

~~~
adventured
> given that they censor the chats in real time

I've never used WeChat, that's interesting to me. How does the real-time
censorship work exactly? If I attempt to discuss the Tiananmen Square
massacre, would that chat message be instantly 'deleted' after sent (in
however much time it takes for them to screen the message that is), something
akin to that?

~~~
Gaelan
I'd assume it's keyword based.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Ya, one major part of Chinese internet culture is making up new words to
describe things whose normal words are harmonized (censored).

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nathan_long
I had to install WeChat for work. What bothered me more was all the
permissions it required to function. As I recall, it wanted access to my
contacts, pictures, location. At each request, I tried saying no, and the app
exited.

I assume the Chinese government got access to all my contacts, pictures, etc.

I really wish that apps were required to function in gracefully degraded modes
when denied access to permissions they want. And I wish they had to explain
each request.

~~~
oefrha
> At each request, I tried saying no, and the app exited.

That's not true for the iOS version.

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freakynit
Governments like these should be destroyed, completely and immediately,
forever.

~~~
redial
They've anticipated that sentiment by, you know, holding all the guns, bombs
and stuff.

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devindotcom
Looks like this isn't new, actually:

[http://technode.com/2017/09/19/now-its-official-wechat-is-
wa...](http://technode.com/2017/09/19/now-its-official-wechat-is-watching-
you-1/)

Apparently the mainland China version of the app lets you continue using it
without providing certain info; this is now in its privacy policy (technode
translation):

"Unless it’s required by relevant laws, your objection in providing this
information will block the feature concerned, but will not influence the usage
of other features."

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bitmapbrother
This has been known for some time. Some of my best friends on WeChat are
Chinese government officials.

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MarkMc
This highlights why US-based companies, while not perfect, are far more
preferable to Chinese companies for storing your personal data.

~~~
pandem
If you're American that is. If you're a foreigner US companies are not far
from Chinese.

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virmundi
I'm glad we cleared the air on that. Now we can go back to using the service
without all the stupid conspiracy theories that they do this. Surveillance is
the norm in China. They do the same thing with IP from foreign firms [1].

1 - [http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/14/news/economy/trump-china-
tra...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/14/news/economy/trump-china-trade-
intellectual-property/index.html)

~~~
drusepth
Lenovo is a Chinese company. I'm typing this from a Thinkpad. Would it also be
the norm for Lenovo to collect/share information from my laptop with the
Chinese government?

~~~
fhood
Isn't lenovo the one that got caught putting spyware in the bios?

~~~
gruez
Not really spyware in bios, more like acpi data, that when detected by
windows, gets auto executed by windows

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miguelrochefort
Link is broken.

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snakeanus
I thought that it was talking about WeeChat (the irc client) for a moment.

