https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.tencent.mm/latest/
It requires 71 permissions, which is pretty much full access to your device.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
64 points (91.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35801 readers
1580 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Holy shit. Nope. Not going there.
Why not? Beijing is lovely this time of year.
This is a huge red flag. Unless they have a strong reason to believe otherwise no one should ever install an app with permissions like that.
Isn't WeChat the app that is used for everything in China? It's not just a communication app. So yes, there is more than one reason for it. A lot of its probably required to perform so many functions, but also they are collecting everything on you too.
Yeah it does quite literally everything, so the permissions make a bit more sense. For me, living in China, I'd be crippled not having it. I use it to book travel, pay bills, talk, register for services, book a doctor's appointment, pay for goods, use it as a login for other apps. The list goes on ad infinitum. If you're using it as a chat app, you're paying Ferrari price (in user data) for an electric scooter.
I mean it's tencent not sure what anyone expected
Safe in that it cannot physically harm you, otherwise, no.
Also, under normal use, you can not become pregnant. Especially if you are a guy.
Depends on your definition of normal use
And your definition of guy, nowadays
That depends what you mean by "safe".
You should expect that any WeChat account can be accessed & controlled by China government.
I hopped onto Matrix after seeing Lemmy had a field for entering your Matrix info into and while I have no one to really talk to with it yet, I like that it's basically decentralized Discord and uses encryption on every message sent.
I need to learn how to use Matrix...
I did yesterday. A few more hurdles than Lemmy for sure, but quite lovely
It's a good way to see how Lemmy development is going
Is it going to scan my phone for credit card info and contacts etc.
It is. Contacts at least.
But it's not like every single other instant messaging or social media app, even from the west, won't scan it. You only have a choice of whether you want your data to be sent to ad companies or the CCP. Unless of course you're using something like Signal.
Card info no, why would it, they have their own payment systems over there, and your credit is of no interest to them.
Contacts, yes if you allow it.
It's no worse than installing Facebook.
Use a backup phone that's had all its data reset.
It's no worse than installing Facebook
Which is a pretty damn low bar. I get what you're saying, but comparing it to The Zucc isn't doing it any favors. Facebook will mine out absolutely every piece of data that isn't nailed down and infer the rest from what they can cross-reference.
That's what I meant. People don't think twice about installing fb or twitter but freak out about the idea of Chinese apps. Even if it's all the same crap.
You probably shouldn't trust it. Be aware that the CCP will have access to whatever WeChat has access to. Also WeChat will censor/report things based on CCP demands. This might be more important if you have friends and family the CCP can touch or talk to people with that concern.
More modern phones ask for permission to give an app access to contacts or whatever but the app will probably ask. I wouldn't put it past them to have some sort of exploit but they probably wouldn't use it as long as they want access to app stores. If you have to get it off some random site it's probably fucked though.
Safe from what?
If you don't feel comfortable using it, talk to your coworkers about your concern and see what they think, and ask them if they are more comfortable switching to something else for work.
When my relatives went to China, I did a factory reset on an old phone and installed only WeChat on it, used that to communicate. It was only for a few months, worked for me, might work for you?
That is an interesting idea!!
Most modern mobile operating systems have permission control, meaning it can't just access everything on your phone. Access to your files, photos, camera, mic, location, and etc. can be controlled by your phone's settings. However, there are things that cannot be controlled. Many sensors do no require special permissions to access, orientation, gyroscope, accelerometer. Device ID like imei and serial numbers may be accessible, depending on your os. Now I've never heard of Wechat having malicious code, but if it does, it could gain unauthorized access to your device data. Apps stores tend to not allow malware on their platforms so the Google Play and Apple Appstore versions are probably not malware, but it can become spyware if you grant it enough permissions.
Edit: Also, Wechat requires internet access to work, so any data you input can be accessible to the company. Now Wechat is owned by Tencent, a Chinese company. China is infamous for requiring companies to share data with the government. So everything you send through the app can be assumed to be in the hands of the government of China
Your enemy's enemy is your friend. It's "safe" as it will not try to steal your crenditials. Although it is a privacy nightmare itself but think as people in China wouldn't care much about Google's privacy policy as noone will use the information against them.
view more: next ›