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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[-] LWD@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

If you're in the US and mostly worried about one app, you can probably devote a Work folder via an app like Shelter to a GF.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 months ago

I'm not in the US, but what is this Shelter you speak of?

[-] Neuromatic@reddthat.com 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

https://f-droid.org/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/

Shelter is an app that takes advantage of the work profile in android to install apps in that profile and makes shortcuts for the app in the normal profile. So it feels like you're just using an app as usual but the app is pretty much sandboxed away from all your info.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 months ago

Thank you! This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for!

[-] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 months ago

Not OP, but is this any better than the Island app? I've been using that for a long time and it seems to use the same android feature.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 5 points 8 months ago

https://f-droid.org/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/

https://gitea.angry.im/PeterCxy/Shelter

Shelter is an open source program that can use the mobile device management APIs of Android to create a work profile. It's used by many people to have app isolation. It works on stock Android as well as most custom ROMs

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024

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