author:Elisa Braun published the 17/07/2019
translation: Google Translate/ doxa-louise
FaceApp: Is there a risk to your privacy and data?
What is FaceApp, the app that makes people look older?
The FaceApp application was launched in January 2017 by the Russian engineer Yaroslav Goncharov. It allows to retouch your photos automatically, for example by making you take wrinkles. A feature that makes the buzz.
The FaceApp mobile application allows one to modify face photos through the use of filters. But it involves unsuspected risks of the users.
Some more wrinkles, less hair and often a good laugh. In just a few clicks, the FaceApp mobile application manages to age the faces of its users in an extremely convincing way. Thanks to a popular challenge on social networks, the FaceApp logo appears everywhere. According to Visibrain, more than 151,000 Instagram posts and nearly 60,000 Twitter posts are linked to it, via the term #AgeChallenge. FaceApp is currently the first most downloaded photo application on Google Play (the Android smartphone store) and the fourth most all-encompassing photo app in France. It is also first all categories on the App Store, the online store of the iPhone. Many people are unaware that using the app is not without consequence for their privacy.
● What is FaceApp?
The FaceApp application was launched in January 2017 by the Russian engineer Yaroslav Goncharov. Prior to that, he worked for the search engine Yandex and Microsoft. FaceApp employs a team of about four people in St. Petersburg. The application allows you to perform image editing automatically. "It allows you to smile, change gender or ethnicity, or just make yourself more attractive," said its creator at The Verge in 2017. The app had already gone viral about two years ago, offering to change the gender of users from a simple image or to add smiles to works of art. It also sparked a controversy in 2018 by proposing to change skin color automatically.
Went to a museum armed with Face App to brighten up a lot of the sombre looks on the paintings and sculptures. The results...
● How does it work?
The company uses facial recognition and applies its special effects through an algorithm based on "neural networks". Popular in the research and development of artificial intelligences, this technique works by imitating the functioning of the human brain, allowing a program to manage a very large number of data and to create connections between these data. In the case of FaceApp, the program can analyze many face images and spot the salient features of a female, male or elderly face and then apply effects uniquely to each face. It is thanks to this technique that the aging of faces has a realistic rendering on FaceApp.
● What risks to privacy?
The CEO of FaceApp says that, unlike other applications, his requires no authorization for abusive access to the smartphone system and data like GPS. In this field, it is less problematic than Meitu , a Chinese application that required access to the address book or geolocation of its users for simple image editing. But FaceApp collects a lot of data, like most applications: IP address, advertising identifiers and other metadata, collected via a dozen behavioral advertising tracers , a domain at the heart of many controversies about privacy.
Then comes the question of the use of photos. Contrary to what some worried Internet users have said, FaceApp can not access all the images contained in smartphones and transfer them to its servers, which is confirmed by the French researcher in cybersecurity Baptiste Robert. The application requires the consent of the user to access his photo albums and only downloads those that the user allows. FaceApp is obliged to download the photo on its servers because its algorithms require computing power that many smartphones are not able to provide. During this step, an access request window appears and the user is free to accept or refuse.
It is only once the user has agreed to share his photo that things get complicated. FaceApp thus specifies, in the general conditions of use , that the sharing of the image amounts to giving up its rights on its property. Yaroslav Goncharov, CEO of FaceApp, is appointed as the legal manager of the company. He therefore has the right to do what he wants, such as using it to train his facial recognition algorithms or in the worst case, put them on an advertising medium.
In addition, FaceApp's privacy policy does not comply with applicable European laws. Indeed, it is specified that the collected data may be transferred outside Europe where FaceApp has infrastructure and that they will therefore be subject to the laws in force in these states. However, the principle of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe is precisely to ensure that a European citizen has the same level of privacy protection regardless of the country where his data transit.
However, FaceApp is far from the only company to have such permissive usage conditions with user data. Twitter, Snapchat or even Facebook also consider that once a user posts something on their network and has consented to their policies of use, this content belongs to them. Technological companies are also often tempted to use face photos to train their facial recognition algorithms, which need to feed on a lot of data to refine their relevance. Recently, it's the IBM giant who was pinned for using the images of millions of people on Flickr to train its software. With or without consent, it's hard to know what is being done with shared images on the Internet.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/secteur/high-tech/faceapp-y-a-t-il-un-risque-pour-la-vie-privee-et-vos-donnees-20190717
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