Privacy Warning Over App That Lets Users Turn Selves Older or Younger
FACEAPP: PRIVACY WARNING ISSUED
OVER APP THAT LETS USERS TURN THEMSELVES OLD
App
provokes shock with pictures – and concern about what they could be used for
·
Andrew Griffin July
17, 2019
FaceApp is provoking
a combination of delight and repulsion among the huge number of people
using it to turn themselves and others older.
The app uses artificial intelligence to
change your photos – changing it so that users look young or older, or
swapping their genders, for instance.
But the terms of the Russian-owned app have led to a number of
warnings about what it could actually be doing with your photos.
When users submit a photo to the app to change how it looks, it
makes its way onto FaceApp’s servers. And it is not entirely clear what is
happening when it does.
FaceApp has to select and upload the users’ photo to ensure that
it can be altered. The changes use FaceApp’s artificial intelligence tools,
which run on its servers, and so the photo must make be given over to the app.
But you might be giving over
more than you realise. Numerous people have pointed to the fact that those
photos can be used by FaceApp – and not just to make you look different.
The terms give the app the ability to use those photos in just
about any way, without giving anything back to the users who first created
them, the app makes clear.“You
grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide,
fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify,
adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly
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.In practise that means that the photos you upload into the app
might seem initially private, but that they could be used in very public ways
later on.Similarly, the company’s privacy policy makes 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.Such terms are fairly standard within such apps, and it is
required that such an app will have some access to photos to fulfil its
functions. But the fact that so little is known about the app, and that it is
made by developers in Russia, have led some to warn that it is best not to use
it, or to be careful when doing so.Some
have also expressed concern about the fact that the app appears to have access
to all of your photos when it lets you choose which you want to adjust. A very
viral tweet claimed that as soon as users open the app, photos start being
uploaded onto the internet.But on iOS, the app actually takes advantage of a feature inside
the iPhone’s software: though all of your photos will come up as options, the
picture won’t actually be handed over to the app until you’ve chosen which you
want, and all of the others will remain hidden. Privacy researchers digging
into the hidden parts of the app have claimed there is nothing to indicate that
the app is taking all of a user’s images.The app itself is old and so are the warnings: many of these
features were first discussed when the app first made its appearance in 2017.
But despite feature updates and other changes, the fundamental thrust of the
way the app uses those photos does not appear to have changed.This time around, the app
appears to have become viral because of the “#faceappchallenge”, which
encourages people to load their photos into the app and turn them older. A number of celebrities have taken
part in the phenomenon, including Drake and the Jonas Brothers.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/faceapp-app-download-challenge-privacy-warnings-old-filter-a9008306.html
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