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Image: LDProd / IStock.com via AFP Relaxnews
BOSTON – Documents and images shared by users outside of China on WeChat, the country’s most popular social media platform, are being monitored and cataloged for use in political censorship in China, according to a new report.
Citizen Lab, the online watchdog of the University of Toronto, says in Thursday’s report that WeChat users outside of China are unintentionally contributing to censorship. That would prevent content they share that censors consider inappropriate to be viewed by users within China.
WeChat’s father, Tencent, released a statement on Friday saying, “Regarding the suggestion that we engage in monitoring the content of international users, we can confirm that all content shared among international WeChat users is private.”
WeChat was not known to be subjecting accounts registered outside of China to the same widespread surveillance as national accounts. An estimated 100 million people use WeChat outside of China, according to Munich firm MessengerPeople.
Citizen Lab says its findings are based on technical experiments. He says he detected no censorship in communications between accounts registered outside of China. But he says he identified surveillance of content (files and images) that is sent exclusively between those accounts.
Tencent does not clearly state in its terms of service that it is monitoring accounts registered outside of China, says Citizen Lab. In its statement on Friday, Tencent said that “our policies and procedures comply with all laws and regulations in every country in which we operate. “and said that” privacy and data security are core values ”for the company.
The researchers say they first contacted WeChat in January to ask about their findings. They said they had not received a response despite WeChat’s acknowledgment in February that it had received their questions.
With over a billion users, WeChat is the world’s number 3 messaging app behind Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger.
Within China, WeChat is censored and is expected to comply with content restrictions set by the authorities. CL / /ra
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