Passwords are dying, long live passkeys. Practically the entire tech industry seems to agree that hexadecimal passwords need to die, and that the best way to replace them is with the cryptographic keys that have come to be known as passkeys. Basically, rather than having you type a phrase to prove you’re you, websites and apps use a standard called WebAuthn to connect directly to a token you have saved — on your device, in your password manager, ultimately just about anywhere — and authenticate you automatically. It’s more secure, it’s more user-friendly, it’s just better.

The transition is going to take a while, though, and even when you can use passkeys, it’ll be a while before all your apps and websites let you do so. But Dashlane is trying to help move things along, announcing today that it’s integrating passkeys into its cross-platform password manager. “We said, you know what, our job is to make security simple for users,” says Dashlane CEO JD Sherman, “and this is a great tool to do that. So we should actually be thinking about ushering in this passwordless era.”

Going forward, Dashlane users can start to set up passkeys to log into sites and apps where they previously would have created passwords. And whereas systems like Apple’s upcoming implementation in iOS 16 will often involve taking a picture of a QR code to log in, Dashlane says it can make the process even simpler because it has apps for most platforms and an extension for most browsers.

Image: Dashlane

To demonstrate, Rew Islam, Dashlane’s director of engineering, shared his screen with me over Zoom and opened up the WebAuthn website — so few apps support passkeys that the standard’s website is the best way to test them — and typed in his email address to register a new account. “At this point, you’d do your dance with the phone, you’d be scanning a QR code, but here in the corner, Dashlane is like, ‘Hey, do you want to create a new key with Dashlane?’ And you click confirm and it’s done.”

The passkey tech works, Islam says. It has for a while, and companies have been testing it and beginning to implement it for several years. The biggest challenge for the industry has been getting everyone on board with the same model for the future of authentication, which has actually happened — Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others are all betting on the same underlying passkey technology, managed through the FIDO Alliance. Apple is adding passkey support to iCloud keychain, letting users log into their devices and apps just by authenticating with Touch ID or Face ID; Google is also planning support for passkeys in Android and Chrome. Microsoft has been building passkey support for some time, using Windows Hello and other authentication tools.

Ultimately, competing with the tech giants could be a problem for Dashlane and the other password managers — it’s hard to out-convenience the built-in software that Google, Apple, and Microsoft can ship with their devices. But for now, Dashlane is happy to have the world’s biggest companies, and their commensurately big marketing budgets, telling the world about passkeys.

“FIDO and the three big platform vendors have put in a lot of marketing, a lot of messaging, to get people off this drug that is ‘okay, type in my password,’” Islam says. “That has nothing to do with technology — it’s culture and user behavior.”

And yes, competing will be hard, Sherman says, but isn’t it always? “Technology’s changing, and the big platforms have a lot of power. I have never worked in an industry where that was not the case.”

As more platforms authenticate with passkeys, Islam says, that will also help with adoption. He points out that most of those companies hate passwords just as much as users do and have plenty of incentives to make the switch. The main sticking point for now is mobile; Android and iOS are getting passkey support, but Islam says he anticipates third parties like Dashlane won’t get access to mobile passkey tech until next year at the earliest.

The next few months are almost certainly going to be a season of passkeys, as security apps of all kinds begin to support them and apps begin to let you use them. The FIDO Alliance is a who’s-who of the companies you’d want to be invested in the project, and with so much of the tech settled, it’s just a matter of implementation now. Passwords aren’t dead yet, but we know what’ll kill them. And it’s slowly coming to life.

Earlier this week, LastPass started notifying its users of a “recent security incident” where an “unauthorized party” used a compromised developer account to access parts of its password manager’s source code and “some proprietary LastPass technical information.” In a letter to its users, the company’s CEO Karim Toubba explains that its investigation hasn’t turned up evidence that any user data or encrypted passwords were accessed.

Toubba continues on to explain that the company has “implemented additional enhanced security measures” after containing the breach, which it detected two weeks ago. The company wouldn’t comment on how long the breach had been going on before it was detected.

As LastPass explains, at this point its users don’t have to do anything — there’s no reason for you to spend an afternoon changing your master password and doing a full security audit. LastPass, on the other hand, probably has its work cut out for it making sure that it doesn’t have to make any changes now that an unauthorized party may have access to its source code.

To be clear, hackers having access to a program’s source code doesn’t immediately mean they can instantly pwn it, breaking through its defenses. Famously, Microsoft says it doesn’t rely on its source code remaining private for security and says that people being able to read it shouldn’t be a risk (which is a good thing because its source code leaks a lot). And while that should be the case for any company, especially ones whose entire deal is keeping your passwords safe, I’d probably want the company to be poring over its code just to make sure there aren’t any subtle vulnerabilities that it missed if I were a LastPass customer.

Despite the fact that the breach doesn’t seem to be a red alert for security problems at the company, it’s still not a great look for a password manager that’s been struggling with its reputation. It’s just the latest in a line of incidents for LastPass (the software’s Wikipedia page is largely comprised of a section titled “security issues”), and the company also earned the ire of many users for changing its free tier to be significantly less useful in early 2021.

Congress is investigating new whistleblower claims made by Twitter’s former head of security following two bombshell reports published on Tuesday — and some are calling on top federal law enforcement officials to follow suit.

This morning, The Washington Post and CNN published dual reports into alarming new safety and security allegations raised against Twitter by Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who was fired as the company’s head of security earlier this year. Zatko alleges that Twitter makes little effort to fight spam accounts and has shockingly insufficient cybersecurity defenses.

Responding to the new reports, several top lawmakers said that their committees and staff were currently investigating Zatko’s accusations. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, confirmed that he was investigating Zatko’s whistleblower disclosure and would “take further steps as needed to get to the bottom of these alarming allegations,” in a Tuesday tweet thread.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, echoed Durbin’s statement, writing that he was “carefully reviewing” the whistleblower allegations and was “assessing next steps” in a Tuesday tweet.

Democratic tech hawks like Sens. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent letters to law enforcement agencies like the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, calling on them to open their own investigations into Zatko’s claims. Markey wrote to both FTC chair Lina Khan and Attorney General Merrick Garland, raising into question whether Twitter has once again run amok of a 2011 consent decree with the FTC over prior privacy and security violations.

“Unsurprisingly, then, Twitter has continued to suffer embarrassing security incidents and face ongoing scrutiny for misleading users and regulators,” Markey wrote in his Tuesday letter. “This blithe disregard for user data and FTC settlements cannot stand.”

In May, Twitter agreed to pay $150 million to settle a lawsuit with the Justice Department and FTC. The agencies accused Twitter of deceptively using account emails and phone numbers for targeted advertising. That suit claimed that, in doing so, the platform was violating the FTC’s 2011 order in which agency officials “alleged that serious lapses in the company’s data security allowed hackers to obtain unauthorized administrative control of Twitter.”

The FTC’s order banned Twitter from misleading users over the privacy and security of their data for 20 years. In his whistleblower disclosure, Zatko accuses Twitter of violating the terms of the 2011 agreement, according to The Washington Post. Federal law enforcement investigations could take years to finish — even longer if officials choose to press charges or sue Twitter over Zatko’s allegations.

Still, the letters show that at least some in Congress see the claims as too important to ignore. In his letter to Khan on Tuesday, Blumenthal said, “These troubling disclosures paint the picture of a company that has consistently and repeatedly prioritized profits over the safety of its users and its responsibility to the public, as Twitter executives appeared to ignore or hinder efforts to address threats to user security and privacy.”

Whenever a popular online app announces a change to its fees, or in the services it provides for those fees, you’re going to get a reaction from its subscribers — especially the long-term ones. The latest app to cause this type of dismay is Otter, a recording and transcription service that recently announced downgrades of the services it provides on two of its plans and raised the price on a monthly plan.

For free users, it means that they will no longer have access to all their past transcriptions — only the last 25. For paying customers who are on Otter’s Pro plan, the change will be nearly as (or more) drastic: they will be downgraded from a monthly allowance of 6,000 minutes of transcribed audio to 1,200 minutes and from a maximum of four hours of audio per conversation to 90 minutes.

What this means is that, for example, a reporter who uses Otter to track interviews and was able to do up to 100 one-hour interviews a month is now limited to 20. Or somebody who uses Otter to record doctor visits or conversations with older relatives will have to remember to start a new recording after 90 minutes is up.

Image: Otter.ai

To Otter’s credit, the company is trying to ameliorate the pain to its paying customers — somewhat. While it is raising its monthly fee from $12.99 to $16.99, its annual fee of $99.96 is not changing. And if you subscribe to the annual Pro plan by September 22nd (or are already a subscriber), then the next time you automatically upgrade, you will retain the older features for one more year.

And after that? Well, presumably, you will either put up with the decreased feature set, pay for Otter’s Business plan ($240 annually), or find some other service to use. But before we describe some of the alternatives out there, a few notes.

First, there are actually two types of transcription services: one that uses an AI engine and the other that uses human transcribers. While using AI to interpret and transcribe audio has improved vastly over the past few years, it is still less accurate — but considerably less expensive — than transcription by people. For this article, I’m looking at services that use AI transcription, although some of them offer both.

The quality of transcription supplied by these apps can vary widely — not only depending on the AI engine the app is using but also on your audio file. If there are a lot of voices talking at once, if there is a lot of background noise, if your speakers have accents unfamiliar to the AI — those factors can all serve to degrade the accuracy of the transcription. So a good idea is to try out a transcription service with a typical file to see how well it performs.

And take a close look at which app could be most cost-effective for you. If you only need to upload an occasional file, it could be best to go with either a free version or one of the pay-as-you-go services. If you do regular uploads, then a monthly or annual subscription may work better for you.

Finally, if you are an Otter subscriber and transcriptions are an important part of your personal, creative, or professional life, it’s worth it to figure out whether one of these works better for you or you should just stick with Otter, at least for now.

Image: Temi

Temi is a basic transcription service that offers such features as the ability to review and edit your transcriptions, slow down the replay, and export your files into text (Microsoft Word, PDF) or closed caption (SRT, VTT) files. Its mobile apps for Android and iOS allow you to record audio; you can then choose to transcribe it for a straightforward 25 cents per audio minute or upload your own recordings for the same price. New users get the first 45 minutes free. (It is also folded into Rev, a service that offers human-operated transcriptions and other services.)

Image: MeetGeek

MeetGeek calls itself “an AI meeting assistant.” In other words, its concentration is on transcribing meetings (although it can be used for other audio). It has a free version that lets you create transcripts from audio and video sources — you can record five hours of audio a month and retain one month’s worth. For $19 / month or $180 / year, a Pro version gives you 20 hours of audio a month and three months of transcript retention. There are also Business and Enterprise versions. New users get a 14-day trial of the Business plan, which costs $39 a month, or $372 a year, and gets you 40 hours of audio a month and six months of recording retention.

Image: Trint

Trint’s website makes it obvious that it’s pushing its AI transcription services to creative users who will take the transcript material and “effortlessly shape transcripts into high-impact content for blogs, social media, podcasts and more.” According to Trint, it can transcribe in 32 different languages and translate finished transcriptions in 54 languages. The Starter plan ($60 / month or $576 / year) lets you transcribe up to seven files per month, capture audio from Zoom and its iPhone app (it doesn’t have an Android app), edit and share transcripts, and translate text to 54 languages. The Advanced plan ($70 / month or $720 / year) adds unlimited transcription and lets up to 15 users edit simultaneously. A seven-day free trial lets you sample the Advanced plan.

Image: Sonix

Sonix offers automated translations in 35 languages. It includes the usual ability to edit its transcripts, a word-by-word timestamp, and the ability to upload transcripts from other programs and stitch them to new ones. You can export your transcripts in DOCX, TXT, and PDF and export subtitles in SRT and VTT formats. It starts with a pay-as-you-go Standard plan that costs $10 an audio hour (prorated to the nearest minute), and you get 10GB of file storage for 90 days. There is also a Premium subscription plan ($5 per audio hour plus $22 / month or $198 / year) that adds a number of features and 50GB of storage. New users get 30 free minutes of transcription.

Image: Scribie

Scribie mostly offers manually transcribed services, but it does have simple AI-powered transcription as well for 10 cents a word with a minimum of $1 per file. For that, you get an online editor, speaker tracking, and the ability to download it as a Word document or a SRT / VTT subtitle file.

Celsys announced version 2.0 of Clip Studio Paint, its popular digital illustration and animation software, alongside plans to move over to a monthly subscription for updates to the service when it launches. It’s left some longtime fans who praised it for its one-time purchase model feeling very betrayed.

An announcement on the Clip Studio website states that “from 2023 onwards, the current Version 1 (the one-time purchase, perpetual version for Windows/macOS, ‘Version 1.x’ hereafter), offered as a download and physical version will no longer receive feature updates free of charge.”

This has subsequently outraged members of the artist community, who previously heralded the service as a fantastic one-time purchase alternative to software as a service applications like Adobe Photoshop, effectively adopting a similar business model that fans of Clip Studio Paint were trying to avoid in the first place.

The announcement was accompanied by a confusing flowchart detailing the benefits of the upgrade packages on offer. Those who remain on a perpetual license for version 1.x will not get any additional updates from the point of Version 2.0’s release in 2023. Buying a perpetual license for version 2.0 will grant you access to the base version but will not include any additional updates from 2.1.0 onward.

Because of these changes, consumers could feel forced into accepting the third option, a subscription for existing users called an “Upgrade Pass” that is valid for one year, which will update their existing 1.x version to 2.0 and continue updating it to include additional upgrades and new features as they release.

When Adobe similarly moved applications like Photoshop and Illustrator onto a cloud-based software as a service model back in 2012, those who couldn’t afford (or didn’t want to pay for) a rolling monthly or annual expense sought out new, more affordable alternatives.

Clip Studio Paint Pro quickly rose in popularity thanks to having a one-time purchase price of $49.99, while a more professional version of the software with features for comic artists and animators was available for $219.

A customizable monthly subscription model that allowed you to adjust the features and number of devices required has been available for 99 cents a month for some time, with all three versions of the app getting free monthly updates and additional features. Clip Studio is now used across a wide variety of skill levels, from hobbyists right up to professional artists, though it should be noted that it isn’t considered to be industry standard software.

On social media, artists expressed feelings of betrayal over the new pricing structure. Many are claiming that the one-time purchase business model is a large part of its appeal, as they didn’t want to be locked in to paying for a monthly or annual subscription as they would with Adobe’s software suite. Those outraged by the decision are recommending a similar digital illustration app, Krita, as an alternative.

Pricing for the Upgrade Pass and the standalone version 2.0 software has yet to be revealed, but the announcement tries to reassure existing customers that “Update Passes will be sold for a lower price than Monthly Usage Plans.” New customers will be able to sign up for a monthly subscription without already having Clip Studio Paint version 1.x.

The brand did specify that Version 2 and onward will have a separate permanent license from version 1.x, so anyone still using version 1.x can continue to do so for as long as their system will continue to support it. At the time of writing, it’s still possible to buy and own the current version of the software, with Clip Studio Paint stating, “We will also provide free stability updates for major bugs or errors caused by the OS or specific devices, into next year and beyond the transition to Version 2.0.”

Airbnb lit up Android phones around the globe with a notification that reads: “Test dev.” The apparent blunder occurred early Wednesday morning, and judging by how many users are posting about it on Twitter, it seems like a lot of people received the accidental alert (via 9to5Google).

While I personally don’t have the Airbnb app installed on my phone, my colleague Cameron Faulkner does, and he got the notification at 3:41AM ET this morning. Tapping into the notification leads to the Airbnb app but doesn’t do anything else.

Screenshot: Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

“A push notification was sent in error to Android users of the Airbnb app, and we are investigating how this happened,” Airbnb spokesperson Elle Wyve said in a statement to The Verge. “Users who received the notification can safely disregard it, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Burger King made a similar mistake last week when it emailed thousands of customers a blank order receipt and said it was caused by an internal processing issue. The “Test dev” notification might’ve been accidentally sent by a developer working on the app, but at least we can say whatever they’re testing over at Airbnb probably works.

Update August 17th, 2:00PM ET: Updated to add a statement from an Airbnb spokesperson.

Celeb shoutout service Cameo is taking another swing at selling virtual meet-and-greets with the celebrities on its platform. Cameo Live is a new service the company is announcing today that offers a 10-minute live video call with a celebrity, which customers can choose to have either as a one-on-one session, send as a gift, or take part in with up to nine friends.

If the feature sounds familiar, that’s because Cameo has tried launching similar features a couple of times already. In June 2020, it launched its first iteration of Cameo Live, which also offered 10-minute video calls, albeit only with up to five participants (not including the celebrity). But a little under a year later, in April 2021, Cameo sunsetted the feature and followed up with a replacement in September 2021 called “Cameo Calls.” At the time, Cameo advertised that the feature would offer video calls up to 15 minutes in length, although at launch, we saw that many celebs were offering shorter calls of two to three minutes in length.

Image: Cameo

In today’s announcement, Cameo now refers to Cameo Calls as its “two-minute meet & greet product,” which suggests that celebrities weren’t opting to host the longer calls that the feature was advertised with at launch. Cameo Calls will be discontinued with the launch of the new Cameo Live.

Cameo says it’s already got “thousands” of celebrities signed up to Cameo Live and lists Sean Astin (who played Sam in The Lord of the Rings films), Bonnie Wright (Ginny from the Harry Potter films), James Marsters (Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and McLaren CEO Zak Brown as examples of the celebrities who have signed up. From looking at their profiles, prices for a 10-minute Cameo Live range anywhere from £208 (around $250 USD) up to £1,660 (around $2,000 USD).

Calls can be booked through the Cameo website and allow you to suggest up to three potential dates and times for a call.

WhatsApp’s new app on Windows no longer requires you to link your phone to send, receive, and sync messages. An update on WhatsApp’s site reveals the refreshed Windows app is out of beta and available to download on the Microsoft Store.

Previously, users on Windows had to download WhatsApp’s web-based desktop app or access the messaging service from their web browsers. The new app is native to Windows, which, as WhatsApp explains, should make the app faster and more responsive.

The redesigned WhatsApp has a slightly cleaner interface when compared to the previous version of the app but otherwise doesn’t look all that different. The biggest change is that you no longer need to keep your phone online to sync messages between your phone and the desktop app. WhatsApp says it’s currently working on a native app for macOS as well.

WhatsApp’s multi-device feature has been fully rolled out and is out of beta. This lets you link up to four devices to your WhatsApp account without needing your phone, all while maintaining end-to-end encryption.

In April, WABetaInfo found a screenshot from the beta version of WhatsApp on Android that indicates the platform may soon add multi-device support for tablets. Right now, WhatsApp only lets you link computers to your account, so adding support for tablets (or perhaps an additional phone) would only make sense.

Using linked devices does come with some limitations, however. For example, if you use an iPhone as your primary device, you can’t clear or delete chats. You also can’t send messages with link previews from WhatsApp web, message or call someone who’s using a “very old version” of WhatsApp, as well as view live locations.

Zoom has issued a patch for a bug on macOS that could allow a hacker to take control of a user’s operating system (via MacRumors). In an update on its security bulletin, Zoom acknowledges the issue (CVE-2022-28756) and says a fix is included in version 5.11.5 of the app on Mac, which you can (and should) download now.

Patrick Wardle, a security researcher and founder of the Objective-See Foundation, a nonprofit that creates open-source macOS security tools, first uncovered the flaw and presented it at the Def Con hacking conference last week. My colleague, Corin Faife, attended the event and reported on Wardle’s findings.

As Corin explains, the exploit targets the Zoom installer, which requires special user permissions to run. By leveraging this tool, Wardle found that hackers could essentially “trick” Zoom into installing a malicious program by putting Zoom’s cryptographic signature on the package. From here, attackers can then gain further access to a user’s system, letting them modify, delete, or add files on the device.

“Mahalos to Zoom for the (incredibly) quick fix!” Wardle said in response to Zoom’s update. “Reversing the patch, we see the Zoom installer now invokes lchown to update the permissions of the update .pkg, thus preventing malicious subversion.”

You can install the 5.11.5 update on Zoom by first opening the app on your Mac and hitting zoom.us (this might be different depending on what country you’re in) from the menu bar at the top of your screen. Then, select Check for updates, and if one’s available, Zoom will display a window with the latest app version, along with details about what’s changing. From here, select Update to begin the download.

For an app with over a billion users, WeChat doesn’t make a very strong first impression.

When I opened up WeChat for the first time during freshman orientation at Indiana University (IU), I was amazed at how haphazard it was. The design looked outdated, drenched in a hideous shade of green. The media feed was limited to low-quality photos for reasons I didn’t understand. Even basic navigation was illogical and confusing. I already knew WeChat was a cornerstone of Chinese online life — arguably the most powerful app in the world. Was this it?

For most non-Chinese college students, WeChat is relatively unknown. The only non-Chinese people who use it are usually those who have a specific connection to China. As I learned more of the language and became more entrenched in local Chinese student life, WeChat became a portal into an alternate Bloomington, where thousands of Chinese in southern Indiana come together to create their own social communities and economies entirely via WeChat channels.

At its core, WeChat is a messaging and social media app that includes features from nearly every app currently on your phone. For users not based in China, WeChat may simply serve as a messaging app for contacting friends currently living in China. The rest of WeChat’s many other features can be found tucked within “Discover” and “Me.” The Discover section includes the social media feed, verified accounts from companies and individuals, and thousands of mini programs that act as apps within WeChat, ranging from bike rentals and online shopping to travel and package delivery. While the majority of businesses and apps represented are domestic Chinese, major brands such as Airbnb, Lego, Yves Saint Laurent, Aldi, Air New Zealand, and thousands of other foreign brands use these mini programs to directly connect with their Chinese customers, allowing one to completely avoid the company’s website for browsing or ordering altogether.

WeChat’s true power lies under its “Me” tab within the wallet, which combines a user’s bank accounts, identification cards, and most recently, health information. With all of this information directly integrated into WeChat’s functions, the app’s capabilities extend to nearly every service imaginable. These include (but are not limited to) food delivery, bike rentals, train tickets, utility bills, health certificates, car buying, investments, charity donations, and thousands of miniature apps that extend WeChat’s capabilities to nearly every service imaginable. Paying in physical stores is as simple as scanning the cashier’s QR code or holding your account’s barcode in WeChat to be scanned by the barcode reader.

If you haven’t explored WeChat, using a single app for the majority of your screen time might seem preposterous. But in China, this kind of deep cross-functionality is taken for granted.

During my first year at Indiana University, I was excluded from many of the features that WeChat had to offer due to my lack of a Chinese bank account in addition to possessing the international version of the app. (Due to data privacy reasons, WeChat downloaded outside of China is slightly different and lacks many features of the domestic version.) And most importantly, I also lacked the ability to read enough Chinese to understand the features.

In 2018, I had the opportunity to travel to China for the first time while studying abroad at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Experiencing WeChat as more than just a messaging and social media app made me understand what true digital convenience could look like. From automatically pulling up a restaurant’s menu after the app geo-located me to placing all of my transportation options from A to B on a single screen, WeChat simplified my digital life down to nearly a singular app. Being immersed in the world of WeChat did require some getting used to. For example, the complete lack of interaction with waitstaff in restaurants, save for the bringing and clearing of food, was a new experience since ordering and payment all occurred via WeChat. Scanning WeChat QR codes became as common as a handshake, and I had a group chat for every class, occasion, and friend group combination.

Upon returning from China for the first time and experiencing the wonders of WeChat, I became determined to expose myself to more Chinese culture and social scenes in Bloomington. By scanning some of the community-oriented QR codes found in the windows of Bloomington’s many Chinese stores and restaurants with links to their “channels,” my feed quickly became filled with postings of local events, newsletters from local Chinese farmers, used luxury car sales, and daily menus for innumerable restaurants.

Through friends’ recommendations and a flurry of forwarded QR screenshots, I had found the ultimate Chinese-style convenience in Bloomington. I could get fresh coconut smoothies and piping hot dumplings delivered straight to my desk at the library within 15 minutes, suggesting that there was a large smoothie- and dumpling-making operation occurring in one of the nearby dorm buildings. When I tried to ask more about the virtual kitchen, the girl with a Hello Kitty backpack who brought me the smoothie was gone as quickly as she came.

As my Chinese improved and I became more involved in the WeChat-centric student life on campus, I slowly began to understand why WeChat is essential for Chinese living abroad. Apart from the obvious communication with friends and family back home, WeChat provides overseas Chinese a direct link to many of the creature comforts they miss from home. Similar to Facebook groups that cater to American expats and emigrants, WeChat also provides a support network with access to services such as US tax return assistance and Mandarin language therapy. For me, it provided a way to stay connected with China in a time when China couldn’t be more difficult to reach.

Upon graduating from Indiana University, I moved to Munich, Germany, where I work full time in consulting. A quick search through the various official accounts and a quick chat with some of the Chinese visa applicants standing in line with me at the foreigner’s office quickly opened yet another secret world of WeChat in Munich, filled with expat groups, grocery delivery services, German immigration lawyers, and yes, more dumpling dealers.

For some in the international community, WeChat’s appeal to westerners can feel troubling. A strict adherent to Chinese data security laws, WeChat uses its parent company Tencent’s servers to automatically detect certain sensitive keywords or images in content that prevent users from spreading topics considered to be sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party. This is often done without the sender or the recipient knowing that it was actually censored. Crucially, Tencent data transmitted between two non-Chinese-registered accounts does not have to follow mainland Chinese internet security laws — but the mere possibility of speech restrictions is enough to raise the alarm for some leaders. India has already banned the app in response to those concerns, and the US has taken steps in the same direction — although the Biden administration’s approach to the issue remains unclear.

But if WeChat is ever blocked in the United States, we’d be losing more than just an app. WeChat’s overwhelming nature is a reflection of Chinese culture itself: opportunistic and built on orderly chaos. WeChat gives me the sense of being at the pulse of the Chinese-speaking world, which makes it worth wading through the constant promotional spam messages that fill my group chats and the app’s massive, unfilterable social feed. It’s a taste of Chinese technological convenience and a ticket into the hidden world of the overseas Chinese community and economy. And while I enjoy the secret delivery services and event invites, I am most grateful to WeChat for increasing my own cultural understanding and for providing me with a daily dose of life in China, a country I truly hope to return to one day.

Aaron Corbett is a recent graduate of Indiana University and currently lives in Munich, Germany.