Anyone who uses social media will without doubt have seen selfies posted using the ageing filter over the last few days, by both friends and celebrities. For those of you who don’t know, FaceApp is an app that has recently gripped users, allowing them to upload selfies and apply filter to see how you may look when you’re older.
FaceApp might be back but this time it is attracting mixed thoughts amongst the mass amount of users who are using the face transforming app. The terms and conditions of the Russian owned app are raising questions regarding what they are doing with your photos as their privacy policy states it collects all of the uploaded pictures.
The terms read as follows: ‘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’.
Terms and conditions such as the ones outlined by FaceApp are relatively standard in similar apps, however, with little known about this particular app and the fact it is developed by Russians, has pushed some users to be very wary about how and in some cases if they use the app.
Calls For An FBI Investigation
With all the speculation surrounding the new viral app, senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has called for an investigation into FaceApp, calling it “deeply troubling” that US citizens data could be in the hands of a “hostile foreign power”.
“I have serious concerns regarding both the protection of the data that is being aggregated as well as whether users are aware of who may have access to it” Mr Schumer’s letter reads, after he called for the FBI and Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation into FaceApp. His call for an investigation comes after the 2020 presidential candidates and their campaigners were warned not to use the app by the Democratically National Committee.
Bob Lord, security officer, told staff “This app allows users to perform different transformations on photos of people, such as aging the person in the picture. It’s not clear at this point what the privacy risks are, but what is clear is that the benefits of avoiding the app outweigh the risks”.
FaceApp Hit Back
Developers of the app have responded to claims of a privacy breach, hitting back with a statement which said “Most images are deleted from our servers within 48 hours from the upload date.” They have also reiterated that user data is not shared or sold to any third parties and information can be deleted from the app using “Settings->Support->Report a bug” using the word “privacy” as the subject line. It has also been pointed out that the apps services are available without logging in, therefore they would not have access to personal information that can be used to identify a person.
