Study: WeChat content outside China used for censorship

Documents and ims shared by users outside China on WeChat, country’s most popular social media platform, are being monitored and cataloged for use in political censorship in China, a new report says.

Citizen Lab, University of Toronto online watchdog, says in

WeChat’s parent, Tencent, did t immediately respond to an online inquiry seeking comment.

Until w, WeChat was t kwn to be subjecting accounts registered outside of China to same pervasive surveillance as domestic accounts. An estimated 100 million people use WeChat outside China, according to Munich firm

Citizen Lab says its findings are based on technical experiments. It says it did t detect censorship in communications among accounts registered outside China. But it says it did identify surveillance of content being sent exclusively between such accounts.

Tencent does t clearly state in its terms of service that it is surveilling accounts registered outside of China, Citizen Lab says.

researchers say y first contacted WeChat in January asking about ir findings. y said y have t received a response despite WeChat's ackwledgment in February that it h received ir questions.

With more than a billion users, WeChat is world’s . 3 messaging app behind Facebook's WhatsApp and Messenger.

Within China, WeChat is censored and expected to here to content restrictions set by authorities.