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WeChat is one of the most popular social media and messaging apps in the world, developed by Tencent International Service Inc, and this app has approximately 1 billion monthly active users worldwide. WeChat not only has social, instant messaging, and chat functions but also includes a variety of services such as payment, shopping, transfer money, split the bill, and transportation and so forth. Because of its multifunction, WeChat becomes the dominant app in China and one of the largest and most powerful apps in the world like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Undoubtedly, WeChat has facilitated people lives in different ways, at the same time the users of WeChat has also raised concerns regarding their privacy.

In this essay, I will divide it into two parts. The first component of this essay I will mainly describe the Privacy Policy of WeChat, and generally assess the effectuality of the policy. I will elaborate to what extent and scope the privacy policy applies, what information WeChat will collect, how the information will be gathered, and how WeChat shares and uses the information. In the second and next part, I will focus on the privacy concerns, complaints, and potential privacy issues about WeChat. I will also combine with both domestic laws and international laws such as Canada’s PIPEDA to analyze the privacy policy and provide the possible alternative solutions to protect WeChat users’ privacy right.

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                                                                                                                              i.            The Scope of WeChat Privacy Policy

At the beginning of WeChat Privacy Policy, they state that the customer’s privacy is the first priority, their privacy policy notifies you that you have freedom of choices to use WeChat and related services, and also informs you their operations. They mentioned that if you choose to use WeChat which means you consent their company may gather, save, share, and use your information according to the official Privacy Policy of WeChat, however, the customers may withdraw their consent if they change their mind later. Their Privacy Policy not only applies to WeChat but also other related services such as WeChat public platform. The other services could have more privacy-associated provisions which you must agree in order to use the services. Customers must read and understand the official privacy policy in advance. In addition, customers must pay attention on this policy is not applicable to any other services apart from WeChat, the third parties’ services or websites that you might use to access through WeChat, and other corporations, institutions, or agencies who publicize on WeChat. Moreover, the policy states if you use WeChat as a representative of your institution, company, government or other organization, you must inform the relevant person such as the directors or owners and get their consent that WeChat collects their personal information you provided. The reason is WeChat needs to deal with their personal information according to this Privacy Policy as required by statutes and rules.

                                                                                                                          ii.            What Information Has been Collected

The official WeChat Privacy Policy clearly defines the meaning of a variety of information they will collect such as personal information, non-personal information, sensitive personal information, location information, log data, and shared information, they also provide us examples about the different information. In their policy, they state that the information including personal and non-personal information. The former can be defined as the any information could be used to recognize you or related individual, or the information may distinguish you from other persons such as date of birth, address, school, voice, name and so on. The latter includes the information may not used to identify you directly or indirectly such as unnamed, false name, or assumed name. In accordance with this privacy policy, the sensitive information may include but not limited to in 

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