Tencent’s WeChat tightens privacy controls for third-party apps, calls out rival DingTalk for alleged violations
- The ubiquitous app has restricted rights to collect sensitive personal information to a smaller group of mini program developers
- It also highlighted risks posed by links from third-party apps, saying they “could leak private information without the user’s knowledge”
Under the new privacy controls, information can only be gathered on a need-to-know basis for mini programs, which run within the WeChat platform. Developers must include information about the types of personal data they are collecting and how they are doing so in the app’s back-end data, WeChat’s legal team said in a statement on its official account.
“Protecting the privacy of users has always been our bottom line,” WeChat said in the statement. “We hope to work with all service providers to bring users a safe and good experience.”
The ubiquitous do-everything app operated by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings said the move was in response to some mini programs that have violated its user privacy regulations “in the name of epidemic prevention and control”. Since the start of 2020, WeChat has intercepted 3,252 attempts to collect users’ personal information by 2,392 mini programs, it said.
These links violate WeChat’s rules and “could leak private information without the user's knowledge”, WeChat said, adding that it has banned these links from opening directly within the platform, and users have to copy and paste them in their browsers to open them instead.