Business
23:05, 14-Mar-2018
WeChat to further crack down on privacy infringement and counterfeit products
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WeChat, China’s most popular instant messaging app, has announced its major breakthrough in fighting privacy infringement and sales of counterfeit products this Tuesday.
During its first Brand Protection Conference, WeChat issued an annual report on safeguarding brand owners.
The report said that by the end of 2017, WeChat has provided brand protection services for over 400 popular brands of 186 companies from 18 different countries.
The app owns over one billion active users worldwide, due to its comprehensive functions that combine Instagram, WhatsApp and PayPal.
It has also offered over 120,000 infringement clues to brand owners, and fined more than 72,000 fraudulent WeChat accounts.
The report also revealed that as of early February 2018, WeChat has removed more than 22,300 infringing links and permanently banned nearly 1,000 bogus mini programs.
According to Huang Hanzhang, head of WeChat’s Brand Protection Platform, infringements in the mobile Internet sector were widely spread through apps, websites and many other platforms; multiple payment methods and different logistics make it difficult to trace fake products, complicating the traces of infringement.
“With a new measurement to open the previously invite-only brand protection mechanism to applications of all brands, we’ll continue to strengthen our crackdown on sellers of fake items,” Huang told CGTN.
WeChat’s success in China attracted foreign governments’ cooperation to protect their IP rights on the platform.
“It’s very important for countries like the UK to work with WeChat, to make sure that commerce can be done in a stable and consistent regulatory environment. So ultimately, British and Chinese companies can do more and more trade,” said Karen Maddocks, the British consul general in Guangzhou.