*Celebrities across the internet are embracing the FaceApp hype after a retooled version of its old age filter sent social media into a frenzy.
Social media users have been sharing images of what they would look like as elderly folks, including Kevin Hart, Terry Crews Dwyane Wade and Drake.
However, users are being warned that the free “old age filter,” created in 2017 by developers at Wireless Lab in St. Petersburg, Russia, poses major security risks, the New York Post reports.
FaceApp has gone viral thanks to its age filter, which now reportedly owns more than 150 million people’s faces and names. According to the user agreement, the company has an endless license to do anything they wish with this information — made possible by the #faceappchallenge.
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Users must grant FaceApp permission to access the photo gallery on their cell phones, and the company notes in their Terms and Conditions that they have the right to modify, reproduce and publish any of your images through its AI.
UK-based Digitas strategist James Whatley said on Twitter, “You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable… royalty-free… license to use, adapt, publish, distribute your user content… in all media formats… when you post or otherwise share.”
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That means they can also use your real name, your username or “any likeness provided” in any format without notifying or paying you, the report states. And they can do so for as long as they want, even after you delete.
Security expert Ariel Hochstadt told the Daily Mail that hackers (whether or not they are Russian or working with Russia) can use this information against you by cross-referencing your face and phone information with the websites you’re using — such as Facebook and Instagram.
“They also know who this image is, with the huge database they created of Facebook accounts and faces, and the data they have on that person is both private and accurate to the name, city and other details found on Facebook,” said Hochstadt.
“With so many breaches, they can get information and hack cameras that are out there, and be able to create a database of people all over the world, with information these people didn’t imagine is collected on them.”
PHOTO: AP
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