He says the system resembles the global surveillance methods used by the U.S.
Most of the messages were sent inside China, but more than 19 million of them had been sent from people outside the country, mostly from the U.S., Taiwan, South Korea and Australia. Each message had been tagged with a GPS location, and many included users' national identification numbers. This March, Gevers found a Chinese database storing more than 1 billion WeChat conversations, including more than 3.7 billion messages, and tweeted out his findings. The Dutch researcher Gevers has studied Chinese social platforms as well and has exposed a large number of online vulnerabilities in their networks. More than 19 million were sent from outside 🇨🇳 /Va8Lfk3dnw- Victor Gevers April 22, 2019 68% of the English messages were sent in China. 98% of the Chinese messages had a GPS location in China.
#Wechat out international call full#
He declined to share his full name because he fears his criticism could draw retaliation against himself or his family by the authorities in China, where he travels often and where most of his family lives. "It doesn't matter where the user is, as long as I send a message to more than three people, my message cannot be seen in any group," says Stephen, a Chinese American technology professional. citizens who have been blocked from sending messages in WeChat groups or had their accounts frozen earlier this year, despite registering with U.S. Zhou is not the only one experiencing recent issues. "The intention of keeping people safe by building these systems goes out the window the moment you don't secure them at all," says Victor Gevers, the Dutch co-founder of the nonprofit GDI Foundation, an open-source data security collective. Every day, millions of WeChat conversations held inside and outside China are flagged, collected and stored in a database connected to public security agencies in China, say cyber researchers. Researchers say its use abroad has extended the global reach of China's surveillance and censorship methods.Īs Chinese technology companies expand their footprint outside China, they are also sweeping up vast amounts of data from foreign users. Owned by Tencent, one of China's biggest companies, the chat-meets-payment app has more than 1 billion monthly users in China and now serves users outside the country, too, although it does not divulge how many. I just have to know what's going on" in China, he says.Ĭhinese cyberspace is one of the most surveilled and censored in the world. Chinese American human rights activist Zhou Fengsuo says he will continue using WeChat in spite of its vulnerabilities.
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