This post is an introduction to Asia Chats a research project analyzing
information controls and privacy in mobile messaging applications used
in Asia. The project will produce a series of reports that will begin
with a focus on WeChat, LINE, and KakaoTalk. Reports will include
analysis based on our technical investigation of censorship or
surveillance functionality, assessment of privacy issues surrounding
these applications’ use and storage of user data, and comparison of the
terms of service and privacy policies of the applications.

This blog post reports on a malware attack in which a compromised version of Kakao Talk, an Android-based mobile messaging client, was sent in a highly-targeted email to a prominent individual in the Tibetan community. The malware is designed to send a user’s contacts, SMS message history, and cellular network location to attackers. This post was updated on 18 April 2013.

Source: Liau Yun Qing, ZD Net

Several Chinese Internet search players have come together under the lead of the Internet Society of China to sign a code of conduct which requires them to self-regulate to protect user rights.

Source: Reuters

China released proposed changes to its Internet law on Thursday that aim to further eliminate anonymity on the Web and expand control over the companies behind the country’s boisterous microblogging scene.

Source: Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times

A breach of computers belonging to companies in Japan and India and to Tibetan activists has been linked to a former graduate student at a Chinese university — putting a face on the persistent espionage by Chinese hackers against foreign companies and groups.

“China is blocking mention of Inner Mongolia on Chinese microblogs and social networking sites, as part of an effort to clamp down on protests that broke out last week in the region.

Two of the most popular microblog services operating in China no longer allow users to search for the term “Inner Mongolia.” Sina’s and Tencent’s microblogs have 140 million and 160 million users, respectively.”

For full original article, see here

“China’s wary government is a world champion in internet censorship, but Communist Party leaders now want to master the trickier feat of actively shaping online opinion.

The results so far don’t match the zap and crackle of China’s young, who have embraced microblogs as their latest tool for spreading information and opinions that can make Party officials see red. But there’s no mistaking the Party’s determination to reach China’s 450 million Internet users.

President Hu Jintao recently called the “virtual world” his next battleground, and the nation’s Party-run parliament, now in session, has brought talk about how to win over or control the country’s microbloggers.”

From The Globe and Mail

“China’s Internet censors have blocked searches for the Chinese name of Jon Huntsman, the U.S. Ambassador to China, on popular microblogging sites after a video and photos were posted online of him appearing outside a McDonald’s in Beijing where activists had urged people to start a “Jasmine Revolution” in China.

You can still search for Mr Huntsman’s name in English on Sina Weibo and other popular micro-blogging sites, but searches for his Chinese name “Hong Bopei” on Sina Weibo produced a message saying: “According to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results cannot be shown.””

From The Wall Street Journal

“Beijing, in other words, has a political interest in keeping China’s internet commercially healthy. Observers who predicted a decade or more ago that China’s political and economic structures were unsustainable and the country would imminently “crash” were wrong. And contemporary analysts who believe that the relatively closed nature of China’s internet will lead to the downfall of the Party-state will likely be proved wrong, too. Chen Yun, a Party elder who spent much of his career overseeing the economy, advocated the idea of a “birdcage economy” for China. The cage was the state economic plan, within which free markets – the birds – could move freely. China’s approach to managing the internet is similar: the government has built a gilded cage around the internet that will prove far more robust than its critics expect.”

From DigiCha