Chinese authorities claim to be able to read deleted WeChat messages

A Chinese anti-corruption watchdog says it can recover deleted WeChat messages. The agency is said to have already done so with the WeChat account of a person suspected of corruption.

The agency, called the Chaohu Municipal Discipline Inspection and Supervision Commission, said it restored a number of deleted WeChat conversations in March. This would have been done with much the same technology that can be used to recover most important files on a computer.

In a now-deleted post on Chinese social media, the agency said it has launched an investigation based on the recovered messages and has questioned several suspects, the South China Morning Post reported. Many of the suspects questioned have confessed to violating disciplinary rules, according to the anti-corruption watchdog. A total of 63 Communist Party members are said to have been punished.

Tencent, the owner of WeChat, has stated in a response that it will not actively cooperate in being able to retrieve the deleted messages. The company previously said it does not store chat history and that messages are only stored locally on users’ phones and computers. Tencent has reiterated this claim in the context of this matter. Tencent also said it doesn’t use chat history for data analytics,

WeChat is, as it were, the Chinese counterpart of WhatsApp and is by far the largest chat platform in the country. There were a total of 980 million monthly users in September last year. However, the app of the Chinese internet giant Tencent does not offer end-to-end encryption and forwards all personal data to the Chinese government.