Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

You could sandbox it into a work profile that doesn't have access to your main profile. Storage is completely segregated, and the work profile can be easily disabled when you're not using it.

The best solution is obviously to choose another platform and convince your girlfriend to use that, explaining how this little extra effort on her part to use another app goes a long way with you in terms of appreciation and understanding of a partner's boundaries and comfort zone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Shelter is an android app that helps making sandboxed apps

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Yeah this is what I use to create and manage a work profile on my device to keep my personal and work data/apps separate.