[olalonde]

The issue of accounts being banned after a password change is quite common, especially outside of China. This isn't related to the content of the new password.

Additionally, it's unlikely that the protocol has government-mandated vulnerabilities, as such weaknesses could potentially allow foreign governments to spy on WeChat users that are abroad. The Chinese government doesn't need such weaknesses, as they have access to the servers.

[Spooky23]

“The government” isn’t a single entity. Agents within the bureaucracy have to within rules and policies. And the front door access methods have things like audit trails to prevent internal abuse.

There are many scenarios where the existence of an official investigation as evidenced by said audit logs is undesirable for a variety of reasons.

[mschuster91]

> Agents within the bureaucracy have to within rules and policies. And the front door access methods have things like audit trails to prevent internal abuse.

In Western countries, yes - but even there, abuse and evasion of audit trails is quite common. The most infamous scandal here in Germany was around a cop station that more than not resembled a pig sty when it comes to procedures [1] - after the address of a lawyer representing the victims of the far-right NSU terror crew got leaked to another far-right terror cell, the audit trail led to a precinct in Frankfurt but went cold there as supposedly, the cops there all used a shared account of one of them. IMHO, every single one of these cops should have faced a year or two in jail for that stunt.

[1] https://taz.de/Ermittlungen-zu-NSU-20-eingestellt/!5989941/