A two-year-old smartphone app, developed by St. Petersburg, Russia–based firm Wireless Lab and popularized by celebrities like Nick Jonas and Drake, went crazy viral this week as millions of users uploaded altered photos of themselves.
Welcome to the world of FaceApp.
The app allows users to apply a filter to their photos and accelerate their age by 30 or 40 years, change their hair color, and even “swap” their gender. However, along with the popular distraction, came a deluge of privacy and cybersecurity concerns.
Privacy Matters and several news outlets as CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post pointed out that when you use the app, you grant Wireless Lab the right to potentially infiltrate your privacy.
By using the app, users are required to provide full access to their personal photos and data on their phone.
According to the app’s privacy policy, users seemingly grant FaceApp license to use or publish any content shared with the application without notifying them or providing compensation. It’s also not clear how long the application retains a given users’s data or when, if at all, it’s deleted from their servers.
That includes 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 … without compensation to you.”
Essentially, FaceApp can do whatever it wants with your photos.
However, the fanning of the security flames happened when a now-deleted tweet suggested that FaceApp could gain access to a user’s entire photo library.
Many smartphone users also store screenshots of bank records, social security numbers, passwords and credit card numbers in their camera rolls as well as personal shots that—let’s just say—they wouldn’t want in the hands of the Russian government or anyone else, really.
That—combined with the permissive terms and a privacy policy that allows data to transferred across borders and jurisdictions—sparked justified concern.
Yaroslav Goncharov, FaceApp’s creator and Wireless Lab CEO, said in an emailed statement that no user data is transferred to Russia even though “the core R&D team is located” there, and he echoed that the entire camera roll is not tapped for upload.
Goncharov also told the Washington Post in an interview that “most” photos uploaded to FaceApp were deleted after 48 hours and assured the Post that the Russian government did not have access to users’ data.
His response still did not stop a concerned Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer from calling for an FBI investigation. Schumer sent a letter to the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) calling for an investigation into the app because it could “pose national security and privacy risks for millions of U.S. citizens.”
BIG: Share if you used #FaceApp:
The @FBI & @FTC must look into the national security & privacy risks now
Because millions of Americans have used it
It’s owned by a Russia-based company
And users are required to provide full, irrevocable access to their personal photos & data pic.twitter.com/cejLLwBQcr
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 18, 2019
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Schumer also wants the FTC to provide greater awareness of potential risks associated with the use of the application as more Americans download and share photos from app, including those with sensitive data like members of the government and military personnel overseas.
“In the age of facial recognition technology as both a surveillance and security use, it is essential that users have the information they need to ensure their personal and biometric data remains secure, including from hostile foreign nations,” Schumer wrote.
On Tuesday, CNN reported The Democratic National Committee (DNC), still reeling from the Russia-linked 2016 cyberattacks that resulted in the leaking of emails, sent an email to Democratic presidential candidates to delete the app. telling them not to use the app. CNN first reported on Tuesday.
“This app allows users to perform different transformations on photos of people, such as aging the person in the picture. Unfortunately, this novelty is not without risk: FaceApp was developed by Russians,” said a memo from DNC security officer Bob Lord. CBS also confirmed the memo.
Source: Multiple
