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 add to this: you can install an open-source app called Shelter which will let you quickly set up a Work Profile for apps you want to keep isolated.
If you own a Samsung phone, I’d also recommend their Secure Folder, which is apparently pretty damn secure and isolated from the rest of the device.
Indeed. Or otherwise Island as an alternative. Don’t know how those two compare on the security and privacy front.