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

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

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah I ended up installing it in an Android work profile using Shelter, and it is a disaster of an app. I expected a lot more of a professional looking app given how popular the WeChat service is and how big of a company Tencent is, but it's like a shittier WhatsApp. It's not even localized properly, a bunch of strings in the app (like error screens and stuff) are in Chinese, and the English is poorly translated. The mechanism to reply to someone's message is unclear (it's not just long pressing or dragging on a message like in other apps), and you can't send a reaction emoji to a message.

[-] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

It’s always funny to me how people assume the most half-assed software the world has ever seen somehow carries incredibly advanced and impossible to detect tracking deep inside it.

Like we have t-1000 at home! T-1000 at home: that bucket robot that got murdered in Philly.

I just saw you’re from .ca, you may have to make an alt to ask but 100% ask on hexbear. There’s people on there who have dealt with wechat and phones going to and from china and won’t be near as overtly weird and racist as some of the responses here. Maybe differently overtly weird.

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024

72 points (95.0% liked)

Privacy

32179 readers

359 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS