Safest way of using WeChat on Android? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 8 months ago by bionicjoey@lemmy.ca to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn't the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I have some pretty significant reservations, it's not the hill I want to die on. So my question is: what can be done to use WeChat without compromising my whole phone? I'm okay with it if our conversations aren't private, but I'd like to know that I'm not giving unfettered access to all of my phone's systems and data to the CCP. What can be done to limit the reach of this ubiquitous app on my device?

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[-] insufferableninja 1 points 8 months ago

get cheap burner phone to put wechat on

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago

Do burner phones have data plans nowadays?

[-] insufferableninja 1 points 8 months ago

yeah definitely. there are prepaid plans and cheap ($30-40) Android phones available through all the major and most of the minor cell providers

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024

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