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

submitted 6 months ago by bionicjoey@lemmy.ca to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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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[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 months ago

That's a great point, thanks! I will definitely be using the international one. I expect since I'm getting it through Google Play it'll be constrained based on the OS permissions I give it. And I don't intend to give it any permissions

[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 6 months ago

I expect since I'm getting it through Google Play it'll be constrained based on the OS permissions I give it

Getting it through google play or not does not constrain anything more or less.

And I don't intend to give it any permissions

Hopefully it won't require any to be able to keep using it

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024

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