Movie blogger duped by imposter WeChat file transfer assistant

A woman from East China's Anhui province said she had been cheated by a stranger who disguised their personal WeChat account as the platform's file transfer assistant function for years, according to media reports.

WeChat users can easily transfer files between mobile and personal computer applications via a dialogue box titled "file transfer assistant".

The woman, who introduced herself as a movie blogger in the provincial capital of Hefei, said she had been doing so until recently.

She found she had been sending files containing private information to a stranger who named the WeChat account "file transfer assistant" and used an icon very similar to that of the real one, the Shanghai-based news outlet paper.cn reported on Wednesday.

The woman said she had found the abnormality when she saw that the suspicious account had recently posted an update on its WeChat moments. She soon discovered it was a personal account from Shanghai that added her in 2015, according to the report.

Customer service at Tencent, the developer of WeChat, said the platform had received complaints from the woman and banned the suspicious account, as using such a user name was against the platform rules.

Local police said they would look into the case to check whether the woman had suffered any losses, for example, if the woman's personal files had been used for loans, according to the report.

The incident ranked second on the 50 hottest trending topics on the social media platform Sina Weibo by Wednesday afternoon.