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Exclusive | Jane Wong uncovers hidden app features that tech giants like Facebook want to keep secret

  • The UMass-Dartmouth undergrad wants to understand what tech companies are doing with user data

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Being Asian and female means that Jane Manchun Wong is still a relative minority in the generally male-dominated tech scene. Photo: Felix Wong

Jane Manchun Wong is an introvert who fades into a crowd. But in the geeky world of app reverse-engineering (yes, there’s such a thing), the 23-year-old Hongkonger is a rock star.

The computer science major at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has made a name for herself in tech circles by uncovering hidden app features that the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat want to keep under wraps.

Now on a gap year back home, we met at the Strokes, an indoor mini-golf club in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay shopping district. I had hoped that doing an activity together would help break the ice, and because watching her spend hours analysing source code did not seem particularly exciting. Besides, I was good at mini-golf.

We teed off at the 11th hole of the 18-hole course, located in a section that for reasons unknown is designed to look like a swimming pool. She manages to sink the ball on her sixth attempt and lets out a victorious “Yes!”

“This is fun, figuring out where I should aim when I hit the ball,” she said. “It’s similar to when I’m trying to pick up my workflow when a new app update is released, you have to try and get the hang of it but once you do, it’s really fun.”

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