Ahmed Shaami
You probably have been swamped with celebrities worldwide posting their aged pictures on Instagram and Facebook for 48 hours. Some think they will age gracefully, others have different ideas but there is something worrying about the app they are using.
As reported by Apple Insider, The app that has gained a lot of popularity overnight after introducing this new age filter has all the rights to use your picture in the future.
According to the terms and conditions of ‘Faceapp’ it clearly states:
“Except for the license you grant below, you retain all rights in and to your User Content, as between you and FaceApp. Further, FaceApp does not claim ownership of any User Content that you post on or through the Services.”
The app also says.
“You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you. By using the Services, you agree that the User Content may be used for commercial purposes. You further acknowledge that FaceApp’s use of the User Content for commercial purposes will not result in any injury to you or to any person you authorized to act on its behalf.”
Now the most worrying part is if you use FaceApp to edit your pictures. The app can do whatever it wants to do with what you’ve created. Needless to say, not only the app can repost your images without your permission as it has clearly stated in the terms, it can post it anywhere without asking you and perhaps can also monetize the images.
FaceApp acknowledges it does not own the content but it can do with whatever you’ve made using the app.
“You grant FaceApp consent to use the User Content, regardless of whether it includes an individual’s name, likeness, voice or persona, sufficient to indicate the individual’s identity.”
FaceApp also states that it is allowed to store your content regardless of whether or not you delete it from their service. This is a serious concern.
You delete the app, your picture that you’ve proudly edited can still be used. The company believes it is storing the pictures to “comply with certain legal obligations‘. What specific obligations are not clearly stated on the website?
Are you too worried about your privacy and your pictures?. Think twice.
The app company has finally responded as reported by Tech Crunch. It says:
We are receiving a lot of inquiries regarding our privacy policy and therefore, would like to provide a few points that explain the basics:
1. FaceApp performs most of the photo processing in the cloud. We only upload a photo selected by a user for editing. We never transfer any other images from the phone to the cloud.
2. We might store an uploaded photo in the cloud. The main reason for that is performance and traffic: we want to make sure that the user doesn’t upload the photo repeatedly for every edit operation. Most images are deleted from our servers within 48 hours from the upload date.
3. We accept requests from users for removing all their data from our servers. Our support team is currently overloaded, but these requests have our priority. For the fastest processing, we recommend sending the requests from the FaceApp mobile app using “Settings->Support->Report a bug” with the word “privacy” in the subject line. We are working on the better UI for that.
4. All FaceApp features are available without logging in, and you can log in only from the settings screen. As a result, 99% of users don’t log in; therefore, we don’t have access to any data that could identify a person.
5. We don’t sell or share any user data with any third parties.
6. Even though the core R&D team is located in Russia, the user data is not transferred to Russia.
Additionally, we’d like to comment on one of the most common concerns: all pictures from the gallery are uploaded to our servers after a user grants access to the photos (for example, https://twitter.com/
