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A viral image app now has access to the faces and names of more than 150 million people who have downloaded it.
The app, developed by Russian company, Wireless Lab, helps you use your cirrent photo to create one of yourself as an older person in the future.
It has gone viral with many having fun seeing how they may look in their old age. Many have also created older versions of popular figures in including already old people Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari and his US counterpart, Donald Trump. Imagine how an older Buhari and Trump would look!
But a realization from the terms of use has now sent palpable fears across the globe, especially among users, many who, in their rush to join the trend, skipped the lengthy privacy agreements and terms of use on the app, as they always did for all other apps.
The agreement says that by downloading the app, you give FaceApp authority to your all your photos as it pleases, whether commercially or otherwise.
The FaceApp privacy page said it “may share user Content and your information with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that FaceApp is.”
According to Forbes, more than 100 million people have downloaded the FaceApp from Google Play. It is now the top-ranked app on the iOS App Store in 121 countries.
FaceApp’s terms of service says people still own their own “user content” (read: face), the company owns a never-ending and irrevocable royalty-free license to do anything they want with it … in front of whoever they wish.
It 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. When you post or otherwise share User Content on or through our Services, you understand that your User Content and any associated information (such as your [username], location or profile photo) will be visible to the public.”
Knowing how suspicious Russian dealings could be especially in the cyberspace, many are now scared about how far and how deep their identities have gone in the hands of Russia, a party in a cold global cyber warfare that also involves China, US and even North Korea.
In the words of a former Rackspace manager, Rob La Gesse, “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.”