The Russian-based app after gaining immense popularity after its age-altering photo filter, has raised serious privacy concerns.
The app came in vogue after it successfully allowed users to digitally alter their age, that takes them 60 years down the age lane. Even celebrities have joined in, posting pictures of their youthful, current or elder selves. More than a million users have downloaded the app from Google Play, and FaceApp is now the number-one app in the Apple Store’s “Photo and Video” apps section.
But the terms and conditions of FaceApp allow it to access to use, modify, adapt and publish any images that a user offers up in exchange for its free artificial intelligence service.
On Monday, as the #faceappchallenge went viral, Joshua Nozzi, a software developer, warned people to “BE CAREFUL WITH FACEAPP….it immediately uploads your photos without asking, whether you chose one or not”. Some media outlets picked this claim up and privacy concerns about the app began to mount.
The FaceApp terms start off rather harmlessly. “Our Services may allow you and other users to create, post, store and share content, including messages, text, photos, videos, software and other materials (collectively, “User Content”). User Content does not include user-generated filters. Except for the license you grant below, you retain all rights in and to your User Content, as between you and FaceApp. Further, FaceApp does not claim ownership of any User Content that you post on or through the Services,” it reads.
The terms give the app the ability to use photos in any way. “You grant FaceApp a perpetual , irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensed license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publically perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you,” its terms read.
This means that the photos you upload could be used in very public ways later on. Similarly, the firm’s privacy policy makes it clear that it is able to collect and store information from your phone and that it might be used for ads or other forms of marketing. The fact that so little is known about the app an that it is made by the developers of Russia , have led some to warn that it is best not to use it.
According to an article in the MarketWatch, Cybersecurity experts have raised several red flags about FaceApp. It’s made by a Wireless Lab, a small company based in Russia and, according to its terms and conditions, your photos could be used in unexpected ways.
Ariel Hochstadt, security expert from vpnMentor blog and former Gmail marketing manager for Google, told the Mail that he has warned people about apps like these before.
“Hackers many time are able to record the websites that people visit, and the activities they perform in those websites, but they don’t always know who are those users,” he said. “Imagine now they used the phone’s camera to secretly record a young gay person, that visits gay sites, but didn’t yet go public with that, and they connect his face with the websites he is using.”
“They also know who this image is, with the huge DB they created of Facebook accounts and faces, and the data they have on that person is both private and accurate to the name, city and other details found on Facebook,” he said.
