Privacy risks in app that uses AI to age faces
Is a peek into the future worth your privacy in the present? That concern was in the spotlight this week with the resurgence of a smartphone app that uses artificial intelligence to transform your current face into your younger and older selves.
People raised fears on Twitter and other social media sites that on iPhones, FaceApp would be able to see and upload all your photos, including screenshots with sensitive financial or health information or photos of kids with the names of their schools in the background.
That’s not actually true, but it serves as a good reminder to think twice before downloading new apps.
Even large, mainstream apps routinely collect user data. But many trendyatthemoment apps are guilty of mining user data as a primary pur
pose, like the personality quizzes on Facebook that opened that information up to breaches in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
As for FaceApp, the app grabs a photo only if you specifically select it to see your face change, security researcher and Guardian Firewall CEO Will Strafach said.
The confusion comes from an iPhone feature that shows your photo library within the app. It is an Apple feature that lets you select a specific photo, but doesn’t give the app full access to the library, even though it may appear that way.
You have the option of granting access to your entire photo library, but even then, there is no evidence the app is uploading anything other than the photo selected.
“I’m always looking for privacy concerns,” said Strafach, who used a network analyzer tool to track what was happening. “When it’s not happening, it’s not happening.”
There’s a version of FaceApp for Android, but those phones don’t tap photo libraries the same way. That’s not to say the app isn’t free of problems, Strafach said.
Photos get sent to the cloud for processing in both the iPhone and Android versions, exposing them to hacking. FaceApp does not explicitly tell users that the photos are being sent to the cloud. Some apps try to limit exposure by doing the processing on the devices, not in the cloud.
FaceApp’s privacy policy also says it is using data from the app to personalize ads and to develop new products and features. It says it does not sell data, but it lists exceptions including one that allows it to share data after removing personal information.
FaceApp, developed in Russia by Wireless Lab, has had surges of popularity before. The app also allows people to swap their genders or add facial hair or makeup.
Wireless Lab told TechCrunch that it may store users’ photos in the cloud, but most are deleted after 48 hours. It said no user data is transferred to Russia, and that users can request to have their data deleted.
Even with those admissions, Strafach urged people to resist the pull of the app. He said the app should have told users it was processing photos in the cloud.
“Bottom line is they were handling sensitive data and they handled it cavalierly and that’s just not cool,” he said.