WeChat has committed to stop regularly examining users’ images after the behavior was exposed by an online influencer.
The app, managed by Tencent Holdings, occasionally views user images for up to 1 minute each while running in the background. According to the screenshots, WeChat visits photo galleries every several hours.
According to reports, the activity was detected using Apple’s new “Record App Activity” function in iOS 15, which was launched last month.
According to a WeChat official, the app searches for new images to make it “faster and smoother for users to submit photos.” However, the business claims that the software only has access to the whole user gallery when the user authorizes it.
A corporate official stated that background scanning for new photos “would be cancelled in the new edition.
The same influencer later added that Tencent’s QQ messaging app and Taobao, Alibaba Group Holding’s main online retail marketplace with around 900 million MAUs, were also discovered to routinely access user images.
The action is “very unpleasant,” according to the influencer, because photos are private and scanning takes up memory and electricity. His suggested solution was for users to disable these capabilities in the system settings.
After the matter was made public, netizens began to express their concerns about the activity, and many continued to do so even after WeChat’s answer.