Naive to rely on the privacy promises of tech companies

SPEAKING AT A FORUM on Monday, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holdings, said, “I fear Tencent executives might be watching our WeChat records every day.” His words echoed people’s long-term worries about information privacy. Thepaper.cn comments:

WeChat is the chat app developed by domestic technology giant Tencent. It is so popular that its users exceed 800 million.

However, here are questions about it: Does Tencent read our chat records? Does this tech giant allow us any privacy?

Li’s words brought that into focus nationwide. Later, Tencent responded, saying it does not keep any chat records, but that response is quite weak.

Tencent sends WeChat users advertisers’ messages based on analysis of their daily habits. If they did not keep the records, it would be impossible for them to do the analysis.

Besides, in some previous judicial cases, the judiciary obtained WeChat records from Tencent as evidence. That’s contrary to Tencent’s claim about not keeping users’ WeChat records.

In this age of information, technology companies have a lot of control over our privacy. Online shopping platforms might know our address, our smartphone number, even our consumption preferences. Online social media companies might know what we have been talking about every day.

WeChat claims it does not keep users’ chat records, but it is naive to rely on their promise. Only the rule of law can better protect our privacy.

Actually, the Constitution clearly states that every citizen has the right to privacy, while the Criminal Law also states that it is a crime to try to get information on other people’s private communication. What is needed is to further improve the laws to better suit this age of the mobile internet, so that our privacy is better protected by the law.