WeChat confirms it makes all private user data available to Chinese government

[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.

[danmaz74]

We are so close to what Orwell envisioned with the spying TV set... :(

[virtuabhi]

Here is the Amnesty International study mentioned in article - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/10/which-me... Also posted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314670

Tencent WeChat QQ 0/100. Hopeless.

[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

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...

[sctb]

Thanks, we've updated the link from http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/wechat-c....

[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

[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.

[est]

> Do they duplicate all data and pipe it into some government datacenter

All chat content in clear text, friend timelines, group chats, are piped into a gov't blackbox in datacenter.

There are dozens of cases when a guy complains about parking tickets in his private timeline then got detained for 3-7 days.

Recent hot buzz is a guy in private group chat joked about a new guy's bin laden avatar "are we gunna join ISIS" then got 9 months jail time[1] for "soliciting terrorism".

(On a side note, the tabloid, GlobalTimes once reported that whether ISIS is a terrorism organization is questionable.[2])

[1]: http://news.163.com/17/0923/02/CV03O5BO00018AOP.html [2]: http://mil.huanqiu.com/observation/2014-09/5140363.html

[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.

[babesh]

I bet direct access to internal tools and databases.

[b3lvedere]

They don't duplicate it. They enforce duplication to others.

[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?

[eveningcoffee]

It is necessary to remind this to the people who do not take this as obvious.

[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.

[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.

[PopsiclePete]

By whom?

[devindotcom]

Looks like this isn't new, actually:

http://technode.com/2017/09/19/now-its-official-wechat-is-wa...

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."

[bitmapbrother]

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

[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.

[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...

[colordrops]

Wait, so even correct conspiracy theories are stupid? Man, conspiracy theorists can't catch a break.

[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?

[narrator]

Stupid conspiracy theories? Are they stupid if they're right?

[benevol]

> Surveillance is the norm in China.

And in the US. And in Europe. And in Russia. And...

[d0mine]

Unrelated: why would you call something that is confirmed to be true a conspiracy theory?

Holocaust denial is a conspiracy theory. Mass survilance is a fact of life.

[nullnilvoid]

Surveillance is everywhere. Go ask Edward Snowden about PRISM program by NSA

[linkmotif]

Whaaaat? What a perspective. Are you... from China, perhaps? 🇨🇳 Privacy is a wonderful thing. I’m so glad it’s a value people still fight for in the West.

[agumonkey]

Someone call Jerry Seinfeld and see if he needs new material.

[miguelrochefort]

Link is broken.

[snakeanus]

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