FaceApp that went viral after launching 2 years ago is back in the news and not for the right reasons/ The app uses algorithms that analyze your photo and predicts how old or young you’d look. And for the same reason as 2017, the old person filter has made the app go viral again as celebrities and regular people post pictures of how old they’d look.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz-mBhvHdRc/?utm_source=ig_embed
There’s now an Instagram page dedicated to showcasing how celebs would look if they aged up.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz_t48GhQy4/
Just like in 2017, the same privacy concerns had been raised but nobody took heed of them when the app resurfaced.
#Warning: Every few years, the #FaceApp comes around.
It's fun.
It draws a lot of people in.
But, it also captures your face along with some of your private data.
It doesn't tell us what it does with that data.Be careful.
— scott budman (@scottbudman) July 17, 2019
Fears were raised concerning how the app created by Russian developers handles user privacy.
My favorite part of FaceApp FUD is that this app has existed for 2 years and the same concerns were raised back then too https://t.co/fwRytomsRS
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) July 17, 2019
FaceApp released a statement to address these issues but looks like US democrats aren’t convinced.
The Democratic National Committee sent an alert to the 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns barring them from using the app. The alert from Bob Lord, the Democratic National Committee’s chief security officer read: “This app allows users to perform different transformations on photos of people, such as ageing the person in the picture. Unfortunately, this novelty is not without risk: FaceApp was developed by Russians.”
The committee is taking extra steps to be cautious following attacks by Russian hackers during their 2016 campaigns and don’t want a repeat. The committee even hired Lord, a former Yahoo! Executive to tighten up their cybersecurity. He recommended campaign staff and people not to use the app.
The Democrats have now taken another measure by officially calling the FBI and the FTC to conduct a federal national security and privacy investigation into the Russia-based company, Face-App. Chuck Schumer, a Senate minority leader called on the FBI to investigate the app.
"I ask that the FTC consider whether there are adequate safeguards in place to prevent the privacy of Americans using this application, including government personnel and military service members, from being compromised," Schumer writes in the letter.
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) July 17, 2019
In the letter, Chuck says that it would be deeply troubling if the sensitive personal information of U.S. citizens was provided to a hostile foreign power actively engaged in cyber hostilities against the United States.
How faceApp company will be like. pic.twitter.com/G7Uj0VAeyq
— Damola™🔥 (@_just_sapphire) July 18, 2019
