Asia Tech Wire (Aug 14) -- Chinese tech giant Tencent has denied online rumors that hackers claimed to have stolen massive amounts of Tencent data.

Tencent said Wednesday that similar false information has been repeatedly speculated by overseas hackers over the past two years, and has also been maliciously associated with a number of domestic Internet products.

"The above information is not true, and is actually pieced together and watered down by the black industry using historical information, which is extremely misleading to the public," the company said.

Earlier, a hacker named "Fenice" posted on a dark web forum that he had information on 1.4 billion Tencent user accounts.

Tencent operates Weixin or WeChat, China's largest instant messaging app, with 1.359 billion monthly active accounts as of March 31, 2024.