FaceApp Application Has Risks

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Celebrities like Adamari López, Daddy Yankee and practically half Hollywood have been carried away by the fashion application: FaceApp. Thanks to it and the use of artificial intelligence, both rich and famous, as mere mortals, can transform their photos to look like 'old men'. However, experts in the field of technology are sounding the bells to indicate that the famous app hides significant security risks.

The application appeared on the market in 2017, however it is until now that it has started to shake the networks. Your users must grant access to their photos to the application to apply their filters. However, it is not specified how much access the app gets once the information is granted. An alternative to prevent FaceApp from accessing your photos is to use stock photos or screen shots of other photos, without giving access to your albums or your camera.

According to the terms of use of the application when accessing to open their information their users grant “a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, license-free, worldwide fully paid, transferable, subject to sub-contractors for licensed use. reproduction… creation of derivative works of [the photos]… publication of the user's content and any name, username and the like in connection”. The use of the photos uploaded to the system to use in FaceApp "will not be compensated to you", it is pointed out.

Adamari López using FaceApp:

Daddy Yankee using FaceApp:

Face App was created by the Russian Yaroslav Goncharov, and this Wednesday, responding to the wave of comments due to the alleged security risk, the company sent a statement responding to criticism.

"We may save a photo uploaded to the cloud [to the app]," he explained. “The main reason is to optimize traffic: we want to make sure that the user does not upload photos repeatedly for each editing operation. Most of our images are deleted from our servers within 48 hours from the last time the photo was uploaded, "said in the text published by TechCrunch.com.

The controversy is so big that even this Wednesday, Chuck Schumer, Senator for the state of New York, asked the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate FaceApp citing "serious concerns" about the security, retention and transparency of the application.

"It would be extremely disturbing if this sensitive personal information were provided to an antagonistic foreign government [that is] actively involved in hostilities against the United States," Schumer said in remarks reproduced by The New York Times.