Don't use FaceApp if you want to keep the rights to your photos
FaceApp has added new age-based filters to their app, bringing it back into the public eye and back on to users' phones. However, if you want to keep your photos as your own, you probably shouldn't use the app.
FaceApp has gone viral again, thanks to a couple of new filters. The AI photo editor has been popular for ethnic swap filters and gender swap filters in the past, and has recently added in filters that edit a person's image to make them appear younger or older than they are.
Along with the resurgence of popularity, it's worth taking a look at the way FaceApp handles a user's created content and user's right to privacy. After all, hundreds of thousands of FaceApp images have been created, it may be time to look at what FaceApp is allowed to do with them.
According to the Terms of Service laid out by FaceApp, users own all their own content -- except they don't really. Much like other content creation apps, FaceApp has included a section in their terms of service that states that the company has carte blanche over anything a user creates with the service.
FaceApp's terms of service as of July 17, 2019
The terms of service start out by stating, "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 statement seems innocuous enough, and it sounds as though anyone who uses FaceApp retains full rights to their content. However, the "license you grant below" section immediately dispels that notion.
The section goes on to state, "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."
Essentially, if you make something in FaceApp, FaceApp can do whatever it wants with what you've made. Not only can it repost your images without your permission, it can monetize the images, either directly or indirectly, without compensating you or notifying you that it has done so in any way.
This means that while FaceApp acknowledges they do not own the content that they are creating, they are legally, perpetually, and irrevocably allowed to do whatever they want with said content. Not only can they use the content in whatever way they want, they also state that you waive all rights if their use somehow causes damages to you.
In addition to being able to use your images without your knowledge, FaceApp's terms go on to state that they have no obligation to keep anything a user creates private. "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."
This raises some concerning questions over the ability to freely show the content created by minors who make up a not-insignificant amount of FaceApp's users. Minors, due to their age and inexperience, would not be able to consent to having their images used by FaceApp. Similarly, Amazon had recently faced lawsuits due to mishandling of minors' data.
And lastly, FaceApp has included a small sentence that states they are allowed to store your content regardless of whether or not you delete it from their service. They state that it is in order to "comply with certain legal obligations," though they do not go on to define what the obligations are. Again, this is increasingly concerning as data breaches are becoming increasingly common.
FaceApp has gone viral again, thanks to a couple of new filters. The AI photo editor has been popular for ethnic swap filters and gender swap filters in the past, and has recently added in filters that edit a person's image to make them appear younger or older than they are.
Along with the resurgence of popularity, it's worth taking a look at the way FaceApp handles a user's created content and user's right to privacy. After all, hundreds of thousands of FaceApp images have been created, it may be time to look at what FaceApp is allowed to do with them.
According to the Terms of Service laid out by FaceApp, users own all their own content -- except they don't really. Much like other content creation apps, FaceApp has included a section in their terms of service that states that the company has carte blanche over anything a user creates with the service.
FaceApp's terms of service as of July 17, 2019
The terms of service start out by stating, "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 statement seems innocuous enough, and it sounds as though anyone who uses FaceApp retains full rights to their content. However, the "license you grant below" section immediately dispels that notion.
The section goes on to state, "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."
Essentially, if you make something in FaceApp, FaceApp can do whatever it wants with what you've made. Not only can it repost your images without your permission, it can monetize the images, either directly or indirectly, without compensating you or notifying you that it has done so in any way.
This means that while FaceApp acknowledges they do not own the content that they are creating, they are legally, perpetually, and irrevocably allowed to do whatever they want with said content. Not only can they use the content in whatever way they want, they also state that you waive all rights if their use somehow causes damages to you.
In addition to being able to use your images without your knowledge, FaceApp's terms go on to state that they have no obligation to keep anything a user creates private. "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."
This raises some concerning questions over the ability to freely show the content created by minors who make up a not-insignificant amount of FaceApp's users. Minors, due to their age and inexperience, would not be able to consent to having their images used by FaceApp. Similarly, Amazon had recently faced lawsuits due to mishandling of minors' data.
And lastly, FaceApp has included a small sentence that states they are allowed to store your content regardless of whether or not you delete it from their service. They state that it is in order to "comply with certain legal obligations," though they do not go on to define what the obligations are. Again, this is increasingly concerning as data breaches are becoming increasingly common.
Comments
Between the data mining, tracking and grabbing of personal IP, greed is killing the internet.
I imagine that's the argument anyway, I'd never use this trashy nonsense.
"Good job submitting millions of faces to a St. Petersburg, Russia based app with a horrific privacy policy that will likely pass this on to state, facial recognition databases, everyone in my Twitter feed.
You 👏🏻 have 👏🏻 learned 👏🏻 nothing."
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/joshuanozzi/status/1150961777548701696). We don’t do that. We upload only a photo selected for editing. You can quickly check this with any of network sniffing tools available on the internet.
Telling Google not to store something basically means "we won't show it to you."
Did you actually read the article?
This has nothing to do with them uploading pictures; it's do with FaceApp claiming ownership of anything that you run through their dodgy software.
Have you considered doing the same type of research I did to get some of these answers for the forum membership? You really should, they'd appreciate it.
Does this mean Faceapp is now considered trustworthy? Nope.
That you aren't interested in what they had to say about the dustup (but i'd be more than curious why you aren't) doesn't mean no one else is. Personally I'm not convinced they've told us everything we should know either but at least some questions have now been answered, and some EULA elements explained a bit more clearly. The Europeans will make sure that what they had to say in their answer is what they actually do.
Funny thing happens when you post a picture of Mark Zuckerberg though:
"Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook founder Mark, has complained that her privacy was breached on the social networking site when one of her photos was taken and shared on Twitter. "
https://www.christianpost.com/news/zuckerberg-family-photo-leaked-randi-zuckerberg-angry-others-blame-facebook-87277/
And the photo(before it was removed) was just the Zuckerberg family standing around a kitchen