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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

#121

Post by gridlockd »

mikeash wrote: post #111
envy2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're not giving the general public enough credit. These discussions always seem to come down to "no one cares about privacy" or "they care but they're idiots." I think many people care about privacy and generally understand the issues, but are making conscious trade-offs that make sense for them. For the vast majority of people—who are boring, non-activist, law-abiding citizens—the value they assign to priva…

What is the difference between “people don’t care about privacy” and “people value Facebook highly, wouldn’t pay much of anything for an ad-free, privacy conscious version of Facebook, and are making a conscious assessment that their privacy is less valuable than the service,” other than the additional detail? It seems to me that you’re complaining about infantilizing people’s choices while simultaneously telling us…

The difference between "I don't care at all" and "I'm making a trade-off" is that in the former case no one is giving up something for nothing.

There is no such thing as an "ad-free, privacy conscious" version of Facebook. If Facebook offered such a product, we'd have a rough idea about what privacy is worth to people in terms of money. All the Facebook "alternatives" are not Facebook.

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

#122

Post by efrafa »

djsumdog wrote: post #68
sergiotapia wrote: post #50

>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…

Is this true for both iOS and Android? It probably needs access to media to store images, and once you grant it that level of access, it can read media as well.

It works on iOS without access to your photos. Parent is right.

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

#124

Post by ehsankia »

Zmetta wrote: post #34
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 is owned and operated in a country of authoritarian-level data-collection and massive public propaganda and the other is owned and operated by a company in Russian which isn't any better but still determines the media narrative.

Especially after Cambridge Analytica, it honestly wouldn't be too much of a tin foil hat theory to imagine a world where state actors such as the IRA would come up with a viral app like this to scoop up data and influence the elections again.

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

#125

Post by stlark »

bagacrap wrote: post #96
imgabe wrote: post #41

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 peopl…

Faceapp knows what 150M faces look like. That concentration of information is valuable. Google built a fortune by taking freely available information and organizing it for easy access. In the case of faceapp there are many nefarious actors who could serve as clients.

I'd also add that facial recognition is also becoming more common as a way to authenticate into systems. This might be a naive analogy, but, this feels like thousands of people providing a company with their name and their phone's lock screen combination.

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

#126

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

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…

I don’t think the general public cares in the same way people on this forum do.

But, I do think they would care if their photos ended up on a billboard or used in marketing material without their explicit permission.

Most understand that the company needs some kind of access to photos for the app to actually do anything, but there is a limit.

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

#127

Post by thetrainfold »

idop wrote: post #72
skizm wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What argument do you use to prove them wrong?

I usually say something to the tune of "everyone has something to hide, that's why we put clothes on; that's why we don't go around broadcasting our medical test results; that's why we don't reveal our salaries and benefits to our colleagues (or anyone); that's why we don't give our address to anyone that asks for it. It doesn't mean we've done something bad or we're criminals, it just means we're human. But if you h…

Side note, but sharing salaries with colleagues is actually a good idea, due to the unfairness that can arise from salaries being kept secret.

Example article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/smarter-living/pay-secrec...

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

#128

Post by tdb7893 »

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…

I think as with most things it's a little of both. HN as a whole is concerned about a lot of privacy stuff that just doesn't bother everyone. Also privacy is hard, even if you buy things in cash companies can still track you if they want, they use cookies and fingerprinting techniques that even most people in tech don't really understand. It's not really possible to counteract tracking if large companies and governments make an effort for it.

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

#129

Post by jklinger410 »

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…

>except that FaceApp is a Russian company?

Well, I mean, nothing. Except that FaceApp is a Russian company.

What was different about Huawei? Except that it was a Chinese company.

And here's the thing, I don't even necessarily disagree with the worry around these foreign companies. They are outside of our jurisdiction and these countries have been known to use companies on the behalf of their governments to perform intelligence/psy-op activities.

Why is this different than the US? It's not. But it's like nuclear weapons, yeah? We are the only ones who can be trusted with them. Therein lies the rub, as they say.

Either you buy into post WWI America runs the world and our military prevented an apocalypse and got every American a car and garage by rigging the world markets and protecting the world with our Navy and every country has to go through us to technologically advance, or you are un-American? Tongue and cheek here, but this is seriously the proposition.

This is the exact decision that was made and accelerated by our military during wartime. This is our playbook.

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

#130

Post by yogthos »

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…

Turns out that as long as the all powerful companies spying on you are located in California then it's totally fine.
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