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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

#81

Post by cdolan »

cryptozeus wrote: post #45
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.

I had this same problem. Except it was my wife who uploaded my face. How do I receive compensation!? /s

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

#82

Post by jermaustin1 »

penagwin wrote: post #11
Rannath wrote: post #6

Aren't contracts with unlimited time periods non-binding? I was under the impression that any contract that said perpetual anything could be trivially disregarded. Or is that a regional thing?

It's almost certainly depends on the juridiction but I am curious on this. Also if any lawyers read this - If "perpetual" isn't binding, would say "The next 200 years" be binding? It's an explicit time period but effectively still "indefinite" for the lifetime of an individual.

IANAL, but I've definitely heard of contracts between corporations being longer than the lifetime of an individual. Like UK leasehold properties [1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999-year_lease

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

#83

Post by hanniabu »

sailingparrot wrote: post #26
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…

Option 3: No one read the terms of services, and 99% of the app users are not even aware of that, didn't even give it a passing thought.

There should be a rule that if a ToS is longer than 200 words then it requires a bullet point summary list at the top.

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

#84

Post by cronix »

bengotow wrote: post #58
jmkni wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app doesn't request Geolocation data, but might the geographic info still be in the EXIF data in the photo that gets uploaded?

Yep this is correct, location history can be scraped from the EXIF data in the photos in your camera roll.

Does Apple allow disabling the exif feature in the camera app like Android?

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

#85

Post by lolsal »

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…

Would a face be considered private in countries/cultures where women cover their face most of the time, or particularly in public? This is an honest question, I really do not know what I think.

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

#86

Post by trevyn »

everdev wrote: post #78
sailingparrot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Option 3: No one read the terms of services, and 99% of the app users are not even aware of that, didn't even give it a passing thought.

Even if they did read it, there's no legal recourse for a state sponsored company that decides to write a good looking ToS and then just ignore it completely. Or, it's not hard to imagine this even bring a completely legit company. I'm sure it's easy enough now for the Russian government to find something wrong they did and demand to see all the data they collected. And finally, even if it's a legit company and they…

Is there evidence they are actually state sponsored?

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

#87

Post by eswat »

ajconway wrote: post #13
penagwin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a scoping issue. On iOS devices at least no app has access to your photo gallery unless they explicitly prompt you for permission. That said, many apps need access to the photo gallery - say I want to put a screenshot into discord. The issue is that now Discord has access to ALL of my photos. There needs to be more scoping options. "Allow access to previous 12 photos while you're using the app" kinda deal.

On iOS is't possible to ask the system to present a photo picker on behalf of the app without requiring a permission to look into your photos.

So I’ve heard about this feature before but I’m not sure it actually exists? From the Photos app you can only share specific photos with specific apps that add themselves to the popout menu. If you disable Photos access to any of these apps they will just ask that you re-enable full photo access.

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

#88

Post by ebg13 »

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…

Your links are truncated.

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

#89

Post by jrvarela56 »

idop wrote: post #64
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…

The general public doesn't have the knowledge or even imagination to understand that sharing your information with nameless/faceless organizations may have downsides re: privacy. The others have been brainwashed well enough to believe that only criminals need privacy, so they don't care. By now using the "I have nothing to hide" example is cliche but it's literally the response I _always_ get when I bring up privacy…

The general public may have the knowledge and imagination - they just don't give a shit. Life is complicated enough to be worried about someone being able to match my face to my name. As if this weren't possible today with social media. Who knows?

Am I really going to change whatever is going on in my day because maybe, someday, some evil corporations will match my likes on twitter to my real-life preferences?

I'm aware of all that can be done with the data. I program for a living and have an 'internet' business. It's just that the claims made here in HN make it sound as if everyone is retarded for giving away their 'privacy'.

We are asking the general population to give up tangible benefits for hypothetical downsides. It's just not convincing enough for people to change their habits. Get in their shoes. HNers mostly can't because we cannot imagine what it's like to see technical details as a burden. Most people don't have the knowledge to make safeguarding their privacy 'a breeze' (multiple identities/passwords/oss/avoiding gmail/etc).

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

#90

Post by eswat »

mikeash wrote: post #17
penagwin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a scoping issue. On iOS devices at least no app has access to your photo gallery unless they explicitly prompt you for permission. That said, many apps need access to the photo gallery - say I want to put a screenshot into discord. The issue is that now Discord has access to ALL of my photos. There needs to be more scoping options. "Allow access to previous 12 photos while you're using the app" kinda deal.

It’s not ideal, but most iOS apps that take images will accept pasted images. You can avoid giving them photos access, and instead copy/paste from the Photos app.

This works with many messaging apps, but I don't find it works with apps that don't have a textbox meant for pasting photos; the UI assumes the only way the user wants to share photos is by enabling Photos access.
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