FaceApp Concerns: Myth or Mess?

There’s a lot of conversation regarding FaceApp right now.

I have friends talking about it on Facebook, politicians are tweeting about it, CNN and Forbes have reported on it, and my favorite YouTuber Philip DeFranco covered it.

People around the world are torn on the privacy implications of this application, yet the person who started this dumpster fire, Josh Nozzi, has admitted he made a mistake when he said the app was uploading every photo. Will Strafach, founder of Guardian Firewall for IOS pointed out that the “upload all” concern that Josh raised was not valid in a tweet.

using a network traffic analyzer, I tried to replicate the thing people are talking about with FaceApp allegedly uploading your full camera roll to remote servers, but I did not see the reported activity occur.

here is marlo stanfiekd with a beard though pic.twitter.com/6wy8cHLNuA

— Will Strafach (@chronic) July 17, 2019

So, the question then, is how did we get here? Why are my non-technical friends posting on Facebook that everyone needs to immediately remove this app from their phones? There are three concerns that seem to keep popping up.

1. The app (FaceApp) is developed in Russia.
2. The terms of service (TOS) are “concerning”.
3. They upload all of your pictures to the cloud.

Now, FaceApp has released a statement to address these concerns, but if you don’t trust the app, why would you trust the statement? So, let’s look at each of these.

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The first claim is that the app is developed in Russia. Great! Big, bad, scary Russia is today’s tech boogeyman, second only to China.

How about Mail.ru, original a major email provider in Russia, but now a major tech company acquiring companies like DonationAlerts (a Twitch/YouTube streamer service) and BIT.GAMES makers of the popular (Read more...)