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| WeChat exceeded its local limit to monitor its international users |
According to a new report from Citizen Lab, the Chinese technology giant (Tencent) monitors the content posted by foreign users through the well-known messaging service (WeChat) to improve the monitoring of Chinese platforms.
WeChat has over a billion users worldwide. It is the most popular messaging and social network app in China. It is an integral part of daily life and enables users to send messages, interact on social networks and pay digital payments. And order a taxi.
In China, social media censorship and messaging platforms are common, and companies that run these services often prohibit or block content that could offend Beijing.
Citizen Lab research found that documents and photos sent among registered users outside of China are sent to users in China, which leads to censorship.
"The company mainly exercises political control over those who use the international version of the app outside of China. The account database," said Ron Dibbert, director of Citizen Labs.
At the time of this discovery, the United States was increasingly concerned about data and applications for Chinese companies. Last year, Washington conducted a comprehensive review of TikTok's acquisition by Chinese company ByteDance on Musica.ly. In 2017.
(Citizen Lab) said that there is no evidence that the control measures imposed on WeChat users are due to instructions from the Chinese government.
Based on the completion of the three-month experience, the research laboratory followed two different cases: communication between accounts that were not registered in China and the other between accounts that were registered in China. Communication.
The demo team sent photos and documents between accounts that were not registered in China to check if they could be identified using the Tencent control algorithm, and if monitoring was effective, Chinese users would not be able to see this content if it was effective.
The report states: "I found that this type of oversight was controlled by identifying the content that was transferred specifically between accounts not registered in non-Chinese territory as politically sensitive and then controlling it when moving it between accounts in China. The content has not yet been sent to a registered account in China. "
A Tencent spokesperson said: "We received the Citizen Lab report and took it very seriously, but in terms of our recommendation to monitor the content for international users, we can confirm all the content that international users have shared for this is using our private WeChat apps."
“As a listed global company, we adhere to the highest standards, our policies and procedures comply with all laws and regulations in every country we operate in, and user privacy and data security are fundamental principles of Tencent. We look forward to that continuing to maintain user confidence and provide an excellent user experience.”
The disclosure describes the case of a large technology company in China that crossed its national borders to monitor the content of its international users, and the current report shows that Tencent monitors the content of foreign users of WeChat to help strengthen its control system China.