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FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

forbes.com

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Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#41

Post by imgabe »

Is "what your face looks like" private information? You publicly display your face everywhere you go all the time. It's not really practical to hide it. Likewise your name you pretty much freely give out to anyone who asks. Is that private information?

So Faceapp knows "There's a person with this name who looks like this". Was that supposed to be a secret?

I'm concerned about privacy too, but it seems like some people just want to hide under a rock for their entire lives. I don't know how anyone manages to leave the house if having people see your face and know your name is a serious concern.

Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#42

Post by asveikau »

mikeash wrote: post #20

We keep harping on about privacy, and then shit like this happens. There are two possible conclusions to draw. One is that the general public actually doesn’t care about privacy at all. It’s a niche concern. The other is that the general public cares but is completely and utterly clueless about how to defend themselves, to the point that an app can literally say “give us your name and face and we can do whatever we w…

It's the updated version of the dancing pigs phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_pigs

The smartphone is giving them funny shit. Any permissions prompts or legalese that occur in the meantime are incidental.

Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#43

Post by Raphmedia »

Every one I know is already using either Facebook Messenger (which has the same face scanning features) and/or Snapchat (which also has this feature).

This is not new.

I've been using FaceApp since its release.

There are a lot of other similar apps that I've used in the past. Especially makeup simulator apps. BeautyPlus, YouCal, InstaBeauty, BeautyCam, Facetune, Photo Plastic, Visage Lab, etc.

Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#44

Post by godelski »

stunt wrote: post #16

The coverage on FaceApp and the way they talk about it is ridiculous. When it comes for instance to Snapchat's numbers, the coverage is about the success of the company. How is FaceApp different than all other apps and social networks that are storing all your photos with location and tags to your friends except that FaceApp is a Russian company? I'm not defending FaceApp. I don't use social networks either for the s…

One people brush off and another people don't.

So if you want to teach people about how and why data is important it is easier to do so when using Russia an an example (assuming you're a Westerner). Most people still have a fair amount of trust in US companies and don't believe they would abuse their power. Call it tribalism it whatever, but that's how it is.

But to us in tech it's pretty obvious that even if Snapchat or Facebook never abused their power (lol, I know) that that kind of data is likely to end up in the hands of the Russians anyway. So it's just easier to talk about data when the big bad wolf abuses it. But I'd also use this opportunity to talk to others about the parallels that we have here and the responsibility of the tech giants.

Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#45

Post by cryptozeus »

stunt wrote: post #16

The coverage on FaceApp and the way they talk about it is ridiculous. When it comes for instance to Snapchat's numbers, the coverage is about the success of the company. How is FaceApp different than all other apps and social networks that are storing all your photos with location and tags to your friends except that FaceApp is a Russian company? I'm not defending FaceApp. I don't use social networks either for the s…

Side point, I also don’t use social media app but at this point it doesn’t matter. 3 of my friends sent me my faceapp photo. No way to escape this.

Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#46

Post by easyat »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #37
mikeash wrote: post #20

We keep harping on about privacy, and then shit like this happens. There are two possible conclusions to draw. One is that the general public actually doesn’t care about privacy at all. It’s a niche concern. The other is that the general public cares but is completely and utterly clueless about how to defend themselves, to the point that an app can literally say “give us your name and face and we can do whatever we w…

It's because there's not been a lot of scary things happening yet. Or if they have, it's been on individuals - like someone seeing themselves on a billboard or advert. But because the datasets are so massive, people are reduced to statistics which is a lot less scary. Of course, if you look at history that can change overnight. Or actually it won't, it's more likely a "boiling frog" kinda thing where nobody's aware o…

The psyops conducted by Cambridge Analytica and similar organizations in the US, England, and around the world is pretty scary

Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#47

Post by Cthulhu_ »

2_listerine_pls wrote: post #21

Facebook owns access to your face, body, name, friends, family, trips, events, conversations, location, groups, interests, political orientation, estimated IQ, payments, workplace, other sites you visit, etc... Yet, Forbes & others talk about FaceApp.

> Yet, Forbes chooses to talk about FaceApp.

https://www.forbes.com/search/?q=facebook

Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#49

Post by fnordsensei »

sailingparrot wrote: post #39
mikeash wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That falls under the second option. Being capable of defending your privacy means understanding that you shouldn’t willingly give your personal info to random apps.

They didn't 'willingly' give anything. Like any app, you launch it and you accept the EULA. Then it asks you for permission to use your camera and for your contacts: it makes sense you want to take selfies and share them. That's it, now all your data belong to them. There is no functional difference between an app that will siphon all your private data and an app that won't. for the vast majority of users, at no poin…

Assuming that the app is available in the EU, I wonder how this squares with the GDPR.

Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names

#50

Post by sergiotapia »

>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.

This is false, you can just take a pic and never give it access to your gallery. If the authors are lying about something so trivial, what else do journalists lie about? That's why I don't trust them.

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