We conducted the first analysis of WeChat’s tracking ecosystem. Using reverse engineering methods to intercept WeChat’s network requests, we identified exactly what types of data the WeChat app is sending to its servers, and when. This report is part one of a two-part series on a privacy and security analysis of the WeChat ecosystem.| The Citizen Lab
This report demonstrates the technical underpinnings of how WeChat image censorship operates and suggests possible evasion strategies.| The Citizen Lab
In this report we take an in-depth look at how WeChat, the most popular chat app in China, censored content related to the NCPC19.| The Citizen Lab
WeChat and Sina Weibo adapted and evolved their censorship efforts in response to the death of Liu Xiaobo.| The Citizen Lab
This report analyzes the information control practices related to a national crackdown on Chinese rights lawyers and activists on two leading Chinese social media networks. We document the Search filtering on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, as well as keyword and image censorship on WeChat, the most popular chat app in China.| The Citizen Lab
WeChat communications conducted entirely among non-China-registered accounts are subject to pervasive content surveillance that was previously thought to be exclusively reserved for China-registered accounts.| The Citizen Lab
In this work, we study how Tencent implements image filtering on WeChat. We found that Tencent implements realtime, automatic censorship of chat images on WeChat based on what text is in an image and based on an image’s visual similarity to those on a blacklist. Tencent facilitates this realtime filtering by maintaining a hash index of MD5 hashes of sensitive image files.| The Citizen Lab
A comparative analysis of security, privacy, and censorship issues in TikTok and Douyin, both developed by ByteDance.| The Citizen Lab
This document provides a summary of the Citizen Lab's WeChat surveillance research findings, as well as questions and answers from the resesearch team.| The Citizen Lab