FaceApp: A Friendly App or A Shady App That Steals Information?

The wave of face filters and face transformations with FaceApp is back at it after a long break of two years! 
The app has algorithms that change your facial features to that of what you would look like when you get older. 
The FaceApp online has created such hype that not only one, or two, but various social platforms are just filled with pictures of youngsters with their old-age selves.

Not just youngsters, it is also celebrities who have opted to this old filter and have posted their old selves all over the internet. Encouraging young minds to do it too!

 Celebrities using FaceApp

It’s cute. Silly, but cute. 
The reason it became so popular is, that it edits your picture so realistically that it looks as if you really have aged.

FaceApp has both Android and iOs versions, and the way it works is, you have to upload a picture from your gallery to their server and VIOLA! The result comes out looking flawlessly YOU, just from the future!
But this is where the concept becomes a little shady!

Once you’ve downloaded FaceApp online, it allows itself to use your gallery for the picture that you pick! This is clearly mentioned in the app’s terms and conditions!

Even if you have a check on “Never” to give access to, which is found in mostly iOS, the app still can access the gallery easily.

FaceApp terms and conditions policies have a little twisted content in them which not only confuses the audience but also,  that its developers can relocate the user data from one region to another without informing end-users.

“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,” one of the terms reads.

 “If you are located in the European Union or other regions with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from US law, please note that we may transfer information, including personal information, to a country and jurisdiction that does not have the same data protection laws as your jurisdiction,” reads a part of the privacy policy.

So, unless you are comfortable with FaceApp’s terms as well as privacy policy, you might want to stay away from the app and its hashtags like #AgeChallenge or #FaceApp 

It is, however, important to note here that FaceApp is hardly the first app to have terms and conditions like this as such language can often be found in other social media apps and websites. 

Still, it is good to keep in mind that user data is the biggest asset of an online service and it can be sold and transferred to generate revenue.

And overall, I think it is important that we think carefully about the safeguards put in place to protect photo archives and the motives and methods of the apps we give access to.

On a lighter note, FaceApp has also helped the jokesters with funny content for a good laugh, like the one below!