On Wednesday, Tencent’s customer service team assured users that the WeChat File Transfer Assistant is a safe built-in feature and chat records are not stored on servers due to privacy concerns. WeChat, a billion-user social platform, adheres to China’s national laws to protect user communication, the team added, and also advised against installing unverified third-party software from unofficial sources. On August 4, the Ministry of State Security of China said the File Transfer Assistant on various applications and platforms may pose risks for data leaks, especially if a user has enabled cloud storage and cross-device use. Consequently, concerns about file transfer assistants have became a trending topic on the Chinese X-like platform Weibo in recent days. [IThome, in Chinese]

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