The IT Nerd

Earlier today, I posted a story on FaceApp and the fact that it has significant privacy concerns. And I recommended that you should avoid it.

I am now doubling down on that recommendation. Here’s why. Developer Joshua Nozzi posted this on Twitter today.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaNozzi/status/1150962227433943040

So this app grabs all your photos without your permission? This is mind blowing. But wait, that might be incorrect:

There is few calls to their backends:
– Get hosts
– Get demo data
– Register your device

4/n pic.twitter.com/fW6K2yqpRr

— Baptiste Robert (@fs0c131y) July 16, 2019

I encourage you to click on the tweet above to get the full picture of what this person is saying. But in short, FaceApp does not upload all your pictures. Or at least, it doesn’t appear to. But… It does use Facebook Accountkit for seamless login purposes. As it you can use your Facebook account to log in. Which doesn’t inspire confidence. Nevertheless, the fact that it isn’t clear what this app is doing or not doing is cause for concern.

The company clearly is feeling the heat because they responded to this crisis via TechCrunch today. I encourage you to read the full statement as it isn’t the most robust one that I have seen and leaves them with a bit of wiggle room. Plus they admit to having a R&D team in Russia, but no info is sent there. That’s something I find difficult to believe.

I’ll go back to what I said earlier today. Avoid FaceApp. Don’t use it. Don’t install it. Don’t go near it. Because given today’s events, it isn’t clear what this app is all about and if you are safe to use it.

This entry was posted on July 17, 2019 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags FaceApp, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.