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Some people have Chinese friends and don't realize what the app is doing in the background. I didn't when I installed it, just assumed it was Chinese LINE. I h
by Larrikin 7y ago
Some people have Chinese friends and don't realize what the app is doing in the background. I didn't when I installed it, just assumed it was Chinese LINE.
I had it on my phone for a while for a couple friends that were new to the country. They eventually switched over to other things and I forgot about the app. I hadn't opened it in a couple months but noticed I had been going through data quickly. WeChat, an app that once again hadn't been opened in two months and I talked to less than five people on a handful of times, had uploaded two gigs of data in that time frame. I immediately uninstalled and explain the reasoning every time I'm asked to reinstall. Most people have no clue how egregious it is.
- __sy__ 7y agoAny studies on the type of data that WeChat is uploading in the background?
- walrus01 7y agoas I recall, it hashes all of your photos and videos in preparation for comparison against a list of known-banned things, because one of its centralized one-to-one chat and group-chat features is implementing CCP government policy censorship. Try sharing to a group chat an image of something going viral that the CCP doesn't want mainlanders to see. You might see it as posted to the chat, but nobody else receives it.
- yorwba 7y agoThat happens when you share that specific file, I don't think they preemptively scan the filesystem in the background.
- prewett 7y agoIs that on iOS or Android? If it's Android I'm not surprised, the permissions system was a disaster last time I used it (admittedly a while ago), but I would hope that iOS doesn't allow WeChat to run in the background.
- yorwba 7y ago> WeChat, an app that once again hadn't been opened in two months and I talked to less than five people on a handful of times, had uploaded two gigs of data in that time frame. Was that just upload or all data usage? If your contacts posted to their "moments" during that time frame, I'd expect WeChat to download the content in case you want to look at it.
- Larrikin 7y agoI don't remember, it may have been a combination or just upload. I just uninstalled it after seeing it had such massive data usage in comparison to everything else on my phone and I hadn't even opened it in 2 months.