Is It Dangerous To Download Wechat [2021]

Growing concerns

Concerns have been growing for some time over overseas censorship and surveillance via WeChat, with the U.S. banning any U.S.-based individuals or entities from doing business with Tencent, and rights activists describing it as a "prison" that keeps overseas users within reach of CCP law enforcement operations.

Launched by Tencent in 2011, WeChat now has more than 1.1 billion users, second only to WhatsApp and Facebook, but the company keeps users behind China's complex system of blocks, filters and human censorship known as the Great Firewall, even when they are physically in another country.

The app is also used by China's state security police to carry out surveillance and harassment of dissidents and activists in exile who speak out about human rights abuses in the country, or campaign for democratic reform.

And it's not just Chinese nationals who are being targeted.

In May 2020, researchers at CitizenLab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto warned that anyone using WeChat, even if they have lived their whole lives outside China, is "subject to pervasive content surveillance that was previously thought to be exclusively reserved for China-registered accounts."

Documents and images transmitted entirely among non-China-registered accounts undergo content surveillance wherein these files are analyzed for content that is politically sensitive in China, the report, titled "We Chat, They Watch," said.

The report warned of "very serious" security and privacy issues associated with WeChat and other Chinese apps, and called on app stores to highlight risks to users before they download such apps.

And a recent report detailing massive amounts of user data collected by TikTok also sparked privacy concerns around the hugely popular video app, which is owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance.

In a technical analysis of TikTok's source code, security research firm Internet 2-0 found the app, which is the sixth most-used globally with forecast advertising revenues of U.S. $12 billion in 2022, was "overly intrusive" and data collection was "excessive."

While TikTok claims user data is stored in the U.S. and Singapore, the report found evidence of "many subdomains in the iOS app scattered around the world," including Baishan, China.

As of September 2021 TikTok had more than one billion active users globally, 142.2 million of whom are in North America.

The report found that TikTok makes use of a number of permissions considered "dangerous" by industry experts.

i have friends in china and i want to communicate with them using wechat.. i have already downloaded wechat on my mobile phone but i am having a hardtime chatting with them on my phone so i want to install wechat for windows PC, but i have read in some websites that it uses a lot of resources and uses a lot of space..

Is It Dangerous To Download Wechat

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But I'm thinking of downloading wechat on my new phone. Problem is, on my new phone I say a lot of bad things about CCP. If I have wechat in my new phone, can the CCP somehow see or access what I'm saying on Whatsapp or FB? Can they access my personal stuff?

The Internet Society has joined other amici in this case to provide technical expertise to support the argument that the WeChat ban sets a dangerous precedent and would damage the Internet and harm its users.

Apparently it is possible to install wechat on Linux now, which I would like to do. I have no illusions that my conversation might be monitored by wechat itself or the Chinese government. However, I have concerns that wechat might also compromise my OS itself (e.g. scanning my hard drive and sending data to the company). I guess there is also no guarantee that this is not the case as it could be malicious by design, is there? But is this just hypothetical or is there serious reason of concern so that I should should refrain from installing it?

And the only entities that would possibly be subject to prosecution under this legislation would be companies who deliberately violated a prohibition on technologies that had been determined to be dangerous enough to trigger a ban.

"I have to use it to communicate. I just have to know what's going on [in China]. But it is very dangerous," he concedes. "It's a natural choice. We have to use WeChat even though I know it's under surveillance all the time." ff782bc1db