FaceApp now has access to the photos of over 150 million users, according to a Forbes published a few hours ago. We warned you, we hope those who were informed yesterday about the privacy concerns did not download the viral app.
For information, FaceApp is owned by the Russian company Wireless Labs and is a popular application that offers some new features which, among other things, allow you to edit your face by making it look older or younger.
FaceApp has been downloaded by more than 100 million people through Google Play platform Android and by more than 50 million people on other platforms, including iOS Apple's
Users are granting FaceApp rights that they shouldn't.
The app's terms of service include the following clause:
“…You grant FaceApp a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, paid-up, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, and distribute. Your User Content and any name, username, or likeness provided in connection with your User Content is published in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you. When you post or otherwise share your User Content through our Services, you understand that your User Content and any related information (such as your username, location, or profile photo) will be publicly visible…”
Wired, on the other hand, supporting FaceApp, states "Is FaceApp scary? What about Facebook?" emphasizing that at least FaceApp does not have access to GPS and SIM. Of course, the website advises users to always be careful with their personal data.
FaceApp released the following statement in response to the above reports:
We receive many questions about privacy and, as a result, we would like to provide some information that explains the basics:
- FaceApp does most of its photo processing in the cloud. We only upload a photo selected by the user for editing. We never transfer other images from the phone to the cloud.
- We store the photo you uploaded in the cloud. The main reason is performance and traffic: we want to ensure that the user does not upload the photo repeatedly for each editing operation. Most images are deleted from our servers within 48 hours of the upload date.
- We are accepting requests from users to remove all of their data from our servers. Our support team is currently overloaded, but these requests are prioritized. For the fastest processing, we recommend sending requests from the FaceApp mobile app using “Settings->Support->Report a bug” with the word “privacy” in the subject line.
- All FaceApp features are available without logging in and you can only log in from the settings screen. As a result, 99% of users do not log in. Therefore, we do not have access to data that could identify an individual.
- We do not sell or share user data with third parties.
- Although the central R&D team is located in Russia, user data is not transferred to Russia.
Additionally, we would like to comment on one of the most common concerns: all photos from the gallery are uploaded to servers after a user grants access to them.
The conclusions are yours…
