\tThe profiles and private messages of more than 300 million users of six Chinese social media apps were leaked online, revealing the information was gathered by a government surveillance programme, a cybersecurity researcher with the non-profit GDI Foundation claimed.<\/p>\n
In a tweet, Victor Gevers said the programme extracts names; ID numbers and photographs; GPS locations; network information; conversations; and file transfers. He estimates 364 million online profiles and messages are processed each day, then distributed to police stations around China.<\/p>\n
Among the messaging services monitored were QQ and WeChat, both operated by internet giant Tencent.<\/p>\n
The database was secured after Gevers exposed the problem, Financial Times reported.<\/p>\n
Around 364 million online profiles and their chats & file transfers get processed daily. Then these accounts get linked to a real ID\/person. The data is then distributed over police stations per city\/province to separate operators databases with the same surveillance network name
\n\u2014 Victor Gevers (@0xDUDE) March 2, 2019 [1]\n
In another tweet, he said the surveillance programme on social networks looks like a jerry-rigged Prism clone, referring to the US National Security Agency surveillance system revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013.<\/p>\n
A Twitter user named Yuan Yang responded to one of Gever’s posts by noting a possible factor behind the leak is local governments telling web cafes to install monitoring apps on their computers.<\/p>\n[1] https:\/\/twitter.com\/0xDUDE\/status\/1101917885100945409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The profiles and private messages of more than 300 million users of six Chinese social …<\/p>\n
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