WeChat Shake Virus – a solution to a very real problem

We’ve had a huge jump in the comments on one of our WeChat posts. Here is a link to the post: Weixin/WeChat – Shake your way to new friends  Lately, the comments have focussed on what readers think are search results using the Shake feature that are skewed somehow. We think we’ve found the reason for this. Check out some of these screen caps. Maybe you can see where we’re going with this:

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WeChat plus 54 other apps related to it.

 

We have both apps on our devices; WeChat and WeChat Voice. Both are made by TenCent International, the company that created WeChat. Can you trust these two apps? Sure you can. No problem. Let’s look at what other apps are available to ‘enhance’ your WeChat experience:

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Same two at the top but lots more below.

Let’s see what we’ve got here. Find Friends for WeChat? Huh? Isn’t that what WeChat is all about? Why would you need to use an app to find friends for an app that finds friends? Something’s fishy here, folks.

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Some of these are pretty sketchy, aren’t they?

One more, just in case you are missing the point:

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Don’t even think of adding any of these. OK?

Just the same as on your PC, you’re at risk when you add software from companies that you are not familiar with. You have to ask yourself, why is this free? What will these people get from offering me free apps? Some get money from advertising. Others, unfortunately, have found a way to hijack WeChat’s Shake results. Instead of showing you other people who are shaking their phones, these apps will show you something else, usually spam ‘contacts’ who will try to get you to spend money on a product or service.

If you add any of these apps, you’re just asking for trouble. Remember those ‘free screensavers’ from a few years ago? Same thing there. After you installed them, your computer would start to act differently or would slow down to a crawl. Adding apps to your mobile device is reasonable safe, as long as you think about what you’re doing.

TIP: All you need is WeChat, nothing else. These add-on apps will do nothing but cause you problems. Some of these may actually hijack your mobile device, meaning that you won’t be able to remove them, even  by reformatting or resetting your device. Your flash card would be toast, even your ROM (the brain of your device) might be attacked.

Install WeChat, maybe add WeChat Voice but nothing else. You’ve been warned.

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13 thoughts on “WeChat Shake Virus – a solution to a very real problem”

  1. Hiii I a regular users of Wechat today I noticed a problem with shake my shake page turned to Chinese language I don’t understand what happened today I don’t want to delete and reinstall cause of my collections…hope u will help me thanks….

    1. There’s no solution to his unless you’ve added a helper app to assist you in finding other WeChat users. Clean out your phone, reset it and then install WeChat directly from your mobile store. Make sure it’s the real WeChat, not a fake version. Good luck and thanks for commenting.

  2. If I shake I am able to find only Chinese language people..Previously I used to find the all over globe people. But from few days I am getting only Chinese people.. Please help on this. I didn’t download helper app too. The application which I am using my friend also use the same but he don’t have any problem only me facing this issue from 1week

    1. It could be that you’ve used the Shake feature too often. Maybe WeChat has a limit and once you’re past that limit, it sends out only Chinese users. That’s just a guess. We’re not sure why that happens. Sorry. We’re not affiliated with WeChat in any way, we just try to help if we can. Thanks for commenting.

  3. If I shake I am able to find only Chinese language people..Previously I used to find the all over globe people. But from few days I am getting only Chinese people.. Please help on this

    1. There is no solution. Apps aren’t guaranteed to work with all phones. Shake and People Nearby do not work with our Nexus 4 but work perfectly with all of our other devices. Unless you contact Samsung and work it out with them, there is nothing you can do. Check out some Samsung forums to see if anyone there has a suggestion. The problem is the phone, not the app. Thanks for commenting and good luck!

  4. My wechat shake feature is not working from last 3 week, whenever i shake it finds Chinese people and the distance is also very illogical. Please give me solution for this.

      1. My wechat shake feature is not working ,whenever i shake it shows chinese people and the distance is also very illogical.I’ve changed my display name and it didn’t work. is there any other solution?

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