I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn’t the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I have some pretty significant reservations, it’s not the hill I want to die on. So my question is: what can be done to use WeChat without compromising my whole phone? I’m okay with it if our conversations aren’t private, but I’d like to know that I’m not giving unfettered access to all of my phone’s systems and data to the CCP. What can be done to limit the reach of this ubiquitous app on my device?
To answer the question: GrapheneOS and a separate profile would be the safest but still…
If you are both outside of china there really is zero reason (other than preference) to use that piece of spyware.
I appreciate the suggestion, but maybe I should add that I’d like to not have to change up my phone too much. It’s a Fairphone 4 running the OEM Android and my preference would be to keep it that way. Are separate profiles like that a thing on stock Android?
She travels back to China sometimes, uses it to contact friends and family back home, and uses it to chat with lots of mainlanders here in Canada. For her it’s not weird at all.
In fact, she expressed to me that she’s perfectly comfortable with the fact that they use WeChat combined facial recognition technology in China for payment processing. When you get on public transit, you can have them scan your face and it will automatically charge you the bus fare. It really skeeves me out, but it’s simply not the hill I want to die on in this relationship. I’m crazy about her in so many ways, it’s okay with me if we don’t see eye-to-eye on digital privacy.
Yes you can use work profiles on stock Android. Look at the shelter app in fdroid to get started
If you’re in the US and mostly worried about one app, you can probably devote a Work folder via an app like Shelter to a GF.
I’m not in the US, but what is this Shelter you speak of?
https://f-droid.org/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/
Shelter is an app that takes advantage of the work profile in android to install apps in that profile and makes shortcuts for the app in the normal profile. So it feels like you’re just using an app as usual but the app is pretty much sandboxed away from all your info.
Thank you! This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for!
Not OP, but is this any better than the Island app? I’ve been using that for a long time and it seems to use the same android feature.
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https://f-droid.org/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/
https://gitea.angry.im/PeterCxy/Shelter
Shelter is an open source program that can use the mobile device management APIs of Android to create a work profile. It’s used by many people to have app isolation. It works on stock Android as well as most custom ROMs
Android 15 solves your issues -
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-15-private-space-hands-on-3432113/
Private Spaces when they come to Fairphone will be perfect for this.
Personally I’d be way more concerned with using OEM Android in the West than using wechat anywhere but if it’s really an issue for you then I’d say insist on trying session or signal… One of those are probably your best options if you’re worried about being spied on…
If she’s unwilling to try them or doesn’t like them then I guess you have to settle for wechat or traditional SMS (although without RCS I find SMS to be a trip to a previous decade lol)
Devil’s advocate here, session and signal do not work in China without a VPN