Government bans WeChat

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This article was published 31/10/2023 (676 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba lawmakers and government employees are being told to delete some Chinese and Russian-made mobile applications after Ottawa banned their use on government-issued devices.

WeChat, a messaging and social-media application developed by Chinese technology company Tencent, must be deleted from government mobile devices by the end of day Tuesday, a provincial spokesperson said.

Applications developed by Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky must also be uninstalled from government devices.

“The prevalence of these applications was minimal, but the province takes the security and protection of citizen and public-servant information seriously and this ban is already in force,” the spokesperson said in a statement to the Free Press.

“Notice has gone out to staff, and anyone with the application on their government device has been told to delete it by the end of the day.”

Federal Minister Anita Anand, president of the Treasury Board, announced Ottawa’s ban of the applications on Monday. People using federal government-issued devices will also be blocked from downloading the applications.

Restricting the apps was done to ensure networks and data remain secure, according to the federal government.

The federal government’s chief information officer found WeChat and Kaspersky applications present an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security, according to Ottawa.

“On a mobile device, the WeChat and Kaspersky applications data collection methods provide considerable access to the device’s contents,” the federal government said in a statement.

WeChat is hugely popular platform in China and is widely used by the Chinese-Canadian community. It has also been used by elected officials as means to communicate with constituents.

Government Services Minister Lisa Naylor, whose new mandate includes improving digital security for the provincial government, did not comment on Tuesday.

The governing NDP caucus was unable to say Tuesday if its members use WeChat to communicate with constituents, but said there is no evidence the applications were in use on caucus devices.

In March, the province also banned Chinese-owned social media app TikTok on government-issued mobile devices over privacy and security concerns.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca