In some new boastful claims by the Chinese authorities, anti-corruption watchdog in Hefei claims that a division in a nearby city managed to obtain a “series of deleted WeChat conversations” from one of their suspects. Using the deleted chats, investigators were able to question other participants and appropriately discipline them.
Officials apparently deleted the post on April 29th, but this has already caused a minor panic on social networks. Does this mean that the government is able to go through your chat history whenever they choose? Well, not exactly.
WeChat’s creator, Tencent, has denied storing or studying any chat histories on the service. Much like other services, like WhatsApp, the messages are supposed to be stored on the phone or PC themselves.
It’s worth mentioning that you should take these claims with a grain of salt. It may be possible that the watchdog is exaggerating on the capabilities it has access to. Though China does hate the idea of having any data that’s out of its reach, and is seemingly willing to go great lengths to make sure it can collect and access any data it wishes at any given time.
