Chinese government officials confirmed (accidentally) that they are able to retrieve messages from WeChat app, not just that but they can also recover deleted messages as well, reported by South China Morning Post
Deleted WeChat Messages Can Be Recovered, Admits Chinese Authorities
Those who are unaware of WeChat it is a Chinese multi-purpose app which has features like messaging, social media and mobile payments and it is developed by Tencent. Tencent claims to have over 980million active monthly users. WeChat is one of the largest social networks in China that is used due to a ban on Facebook and WhatsApp.
This accidental confirmation came from Chaohu Municipal Discipline Inspection and Supervision Commission in eastern China who reveals that it has “retrieved a series of deleted WeChat conversations from a suspect” as part of an investigation, reports the newspaper. The post also boasted of finding evidence of suspects confessing to corruption charges and there were a total of 63 suspects. The post was later deleted but it went viral on Chinese social networks by that time.
Tencent which is the parent company of WeChat denied storing or studying any chat histories. Spokesperson of WeChat stated in a social media post that “WeChat does not store any chat histories – they are only stores on users’ phones and computers. WeChat does not use any chat histories for big data analysis.”
This confession by Chinese authorities caused a stir among Chinese web users for not protecting the privacy of peoples of China.
“Oh, I finally understand why the US bans mobile phones that are made in China,” one person wrote on Weibo, China’s Twitter.
“Does this mean I’ll have to smash my phone if I want to entirely delete [my chat history]?” another user said.
Since the commission didn’t reveal how they were able to retrieve deleted WeChat messages there are a lot of questions that are remained unanswered for example do you require user’s password and login to access their deleted messages, if yes do they have access to all of the user’s username and passwords.
