Tencent Updates QQ After Users Expose Leaked Web Browsing History
Liao Shumin
DATE:  Jan 19 2021
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
Tencent Updates QQ After Users Expose Leaked Web Browsing History Tencent Updates QQ After Users Expose Leaked Web Browsing History

(Yicai Global) Jan. 19 -- Tencent Holdings has updated its instant messaging platform QQ's security protocol after the application was revealed to read users' web browsing history.

Tencent apologized and released a new personal computer version of QQ while strengthening its user data policies, according to the Shenzhen-based firm's statement published yesterday. QQ was not uploading or storing any of the data, it added.

Users of question-and-answer platform Zhihu had exposed QQ's controversially wide online reach.

The app was checking whether malicious programs were using certain websites to access QQ, Tencent explained. The new version doesn't do so. The mobile platform was safe in that regard all along, the company added.

Released first in 1999, QQ used to be China's most popular instant messaging app before WeChat. The platform's number of monthly active users fell almost 6 percent to 617 million in the third quarter of 2020 from a year ago, according to the firm's financial report.

Editor: Emmi Laine

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Keywords:   Tencent,QQ