The issue of privacy faced by "Faceapp," a photo-processing app where you can edit your face to make it older as well as male and female, has been going on the internet. The app has been circulating the social media platforms that even celebrities like the Jonas Brothers, Gordon Ramsey, and some are using it. Primarily, this app is a trend because you can change your face from male to female and vice-versa, and make yourself older. On the contrary, the app is facing backlash from people because of the issue regarding privacy.
It was said that the app is owned by a Russian-based company and can be used by hackers on accessing their private data. Furthermore, the app has also access to the main camera roll found in your home screen rather than a separated one. This set the people into horror because their gallery can be accessed by Faceapp as well as its developer.
“To make FaceApp actually work, you have to give it permissions to access your photos — ALL of them. But it also gains access to Siri and Search...oh, and it has access to refreshing in the background — so even when you are not using it, it is using you," Forbes. This entails that they have more access to your phone other than the photos you have, making the public more scared.
But according to an expert, the issue might not be bad as it seems.
With the privacy issues, experts tried to test it to know its security status..." using a network traffic analyzer, I tried to replicate the thing people are talking about with FaceApp allegedly uploading your full camera roll to remote servers, but I did not see the reported activity occur," Will Strafach. According to him, the app does not have TOTAL access to your camera roll. However, they have access to those photos you uploaded for editing.
Despite the test conducted by experts, it does not ease the public because the server is being handled by the Russians. But according to Forbes, the server is based in United Stated contrary to the claim that it was from Russia:
“This all turns out to be another of the Web’s many storm-in-teacup moments. A security researcher who goes by the pseudonym Elliot Alderson (real name Baptiste Robert) downloaded the app and checked where it was sending users’ faces. The French cyber expert found FaceApp only took submitted photos — those that you want the software to transform — back up to company servers.”
“And where are those servers based? Mostly America, not Russia. A cursory look at hosting records confirmed to Forbes that this was true: The servers for FaceApp.io were based in Amazon data centers in the U.S. The company told Forbes that some servers were hosted by Google too, across other countries, including Ireland and Singapore. And, as noted by Alderson, the app also uses third-party code, and so will reach out to their servers, but again these are based in the U.S. and Australia.”
Goncahrov noted that you can request your data to be wiped from the servers using the following steps:
1. Go to “Settings”
2. Click on “Support” and then “Opt to report a bug”
3. In the text box, ask for your data to be deleted from the app
Source
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/07/17/faceapp-is-the-russian-face-aging-app-a-dange
https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/is-faceapp-dangerous-an-investigation-into-the-viral-apps-privacy-pol
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