Comment by dheera

6 years ago

I run WeChat on a separate phone with LineageOS and monitor its actions via the XPosed framework. It regularly scans my Wi-Fi network, checks the list of installed apps, randomly accesses sensors, and does plenty of other dubious things.

There was also a period of time where if you didn't give it Location permissions, it wouldn't let you login to WeChat. With LineageOS I was able to "give" it the permission but hand it fake sensor data instead of actual hardware data from the OS side.

I'd never think to run WeChat on a closed-source OS like iOS that doesn't give access to these kinds of introspection.

That said I don't necessarily think Facebook's or Google's set of apps are necessarily better in terms of spying, but at least it's possible to message people using a pure web interface without downloading anything, which WeChat doesn't let you do.

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dheera

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kalesh  6 years ago

Do you know Android tracks your location even after turning on Airplane mode?

  • shripadk  6 years ago

    GPS tracker works via satellite and is a receiver. It is not a transmitter. Airplane mode turns off cellular services. So realtime tracking is not possible unless Airplane mode is turned off. Android can record tracker information but it has no way of transmitting it if the phone is in Airplane mode.