Privacy

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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.

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

submitted 7 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?

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[–] ebd6a8c9051028dc1607@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

use https://f-droid.org/packages/com.oasisfeng.island.fdroid/ (work profile) to isolate. and use a pay as you go number to register (rather than you commonly used one). do not grant any permission. set background restriction to strict. force stop it after every use. i think that would be enough

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Why don't you use a better messaging app? If not matrix, then signal? Even telegram is better compared to both wechat and sms.

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[–] Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Weird perspective for someone using Google services lmao.

[–] astropenguin5@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Android does not mean Google necessarily.

[–] Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml 0 points 7 months ago

He talks about using stock android in one of the comments.

[–] chezjoeong@lemmy.world -3 points 7 months ago

And you're not concerned about Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta or even the NSA?

[–] eveninghere@beehaw.org -5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Just tell her there's email. If she insists on WeChat... Maybe she's... err...

I mean, a messaging app isn't suited for a back up. Just throw her phone into the toilet, and many such apps are gone forever.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Probably an iPhone user.

Or otherwise concerned about using an app banned by the state.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah she's an iPhone user. And she wants to use WeChat because it's like second nature to Chinese people. It's as normal to them as email is to us in the west. They are totally desensitized to the digital privacy concerns.

She has WhatsApp as well, but it's not set up properly on her phone so she doesn't get notifications for it. Plus I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work if she traveled back to China.

[–] eveninghere@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

banned by the state

Forgot that part... It's crazy that a bunch of lizard brains ruling an idiotic party can literally dictate people's life.

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