One could now conceivably write an app that scours the internet for these faces on social media and inject propaganda designed to tilt an election outcome one way or another.... (e.g. perhaps by looking at which group an FB user follows, just one of many examples). It wouldn't be outright sabotage, but FaceApp certainly paves the way to greater influence by a foreign government over USA's or anyone's election process/campaign.
FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
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Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#162We 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…
Another: The general public cares about privacy but not more than they care about the perception of belonging and being a part of any sensation that has to do with social media.
Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#163One could now conceivably write an app that scours the internet for these faces on social media and inject propaganda designed to tilt an election outcome one way or another.... (e.g. perhaps by looking at which group an FB user follows, just one of many examples). It wouldn't be outright sabotage, but FaceApp certainly paves the way to greater influence by a foreign government over USA's or anyone's election process…
You could do that exact same thing without FaceApp data though.
Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#164I find it incredibly ironic that it took me about 30 seconds to go to the author's profile, see him plaster all the social media platforms we can reach him on. Went to his Instagram and could tell where he lives, where's staying at when he travels, that he enjoys walks with his mom in Centennial beach in Delta, BC and what he does for hobbies.
All this in under a minute and yet here we are panicking over a Russian Company that can do whatever it wants with your face pictures.
Ok.
Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#165What an utterly infuriating article to read: as you scroll down Forbes drops a giant floating video… on top of the text you're trying to read and it follows you as you scroll.
Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#166We 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…
People probably don't even realize that stuff moves to a server at all. People may think this is all happening and contained within their local app and therefore private and in their control. They probably also assume snapchats go from their phone to the recipient directly and aren't held anywhere in between.
This is I think the most scary possibility. If you think faceapp is processing this in the app with your phone's hardware, learning that they save all pictures sounds like a vast conspiracy and not so believable.
However, if you understand the technology and that most things online are not processed client side, the privacy implications are suddenly obvious because of course the company will keep that data that passes through their hardware. No shareholder will let money be left on the table so all data you put online should be assumed to be kept for later profit.
People have to be better educated on how the software they use every day actually works, at least in broad strokes. This can come in a high school media/technology literacy class or something.
Until that day comes, we have two classes of people: those who understand how the tech they use works and makes a company money, and those who will be forever manipulated by the first group so long as they have a dollar or a right to vote. It's a hard problem to overcome when so many technology companies are entirely dependent on profit from people's continued ignorance and tech illiteracy.
Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turns out that as long as the all powerful companies spying on you are located in California then it's totally fine.
Then why have US tech companies like Facebook taken so much flack in the past year for privacy issues? The fact that that has been the case, contradicts your underlying point. Further, on a personal level it likely depends on where you're located. As an American, it matters to me whether the company doing the spying is located in California or Russia. If you're Russian, you might particularly care if the company in q…
> Then why have US tech companies like Facebook taken so much flack in the past year for privacy issues?
Because they've also mishandled the private data of Americans. Similarly to the NSA stuff, Americans appear to be fine with it if it is done on their behalf to the rest of the world, but are outraged when they experience it. If FB operated differently in the US, I'm sure the US press would be much more sympathetic with regards to their shenanigans in Europe.
Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#168The 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…
Coming from a person that did not take issue with the “Russia aspect” - The only part that sticks out to me is when the article implied you have to give it access to all of your photos. In my brief usage of other social media apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Each photo you decide to share is opt-in. The article also mentioned they run a job to continuously check in. Not sure if that’s to capture current G…
"Each photo you decide to share is opt-in" - I don't think that is really how permissions work on either Android or iOS. Once you have given the app permissions to access your photos, they can do so - with or without the user explicitly choosing which ones (please, someone correct me if I am wrong on this). So Snapchat/Instagram/Facebook might actually be doing stuff with your photos "behind the scenes", and you wouldn't necessarily know it (assuming you granted the "Photos" permission in the first place).
Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because Russia has been demonised in USA's propaganda over decades. They're selling trying to do the same with China now, except it's more for direct commercial reasons than to protect the ideal of Capitalism as it was before. I grew up getting a lot of "evil commies" messages in US American media and I'm not even in USA (I'm from UK).
> I grew up getting a lot of "evil commies" messages in US American media and I'm not even in USA There's more than one reason for that, here is one that might be easy to overlook when someone is critizising USA with good reason: America is not perfect but as a citizen and compared to the bad old commies it was mostly really good. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
Re: FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> providing a company with their name and their phone's lock screen combination In consumer devices the face data is stored only on-device, so any privacy concerns are defended by "it's not sending your face to the cloud" and/or "don't use it if you don't trust it"
But if they have your face from another source and it's good enough to authenticate, that doesn't matter. Your face is a good strong password, but what good is that if it leaks? You can't reset your face like a password, after all.
At least with fingerprints you have 9 extra passwords you can use if your index finger print leaks (I bet my prints are already out there just from getting pre employment background checks from workplaces with hulking old school IT bureaucracies and a workforce pounded daily by phishing attempts).