FaceApp Now Owns Access to More Than 150M People's Faces and Names
forbes.com
forbes.com
How is FaceApp different than all other apps and social networks that are storing all your photos with location and tags to your friends except that FaceApp is a Russian company?
I'm not defending FaceApp. I don't use social networks either for the same reasons. But this double standards in media is ridiculous in my opinion.
Well, I mean, nothing. Except that FaceApp is a Russian company.
What was different about Huawei? Except that it was a Chinese company.
And here's the thing, I don't even necessarily disagree with the worry around these foreign companies. They are outside of our jurisdiction and these countries have been known to use companies on the behalf of their governments to perform intelligence/psy-op activities.
Why is this different than the US? It's not. But it's like nuclear weapons, yeah? We are the only ones who can be trusted with them. Therein lies the rub, as they say.
Either you buy into post WWI America runs the world and our military prevented an apocalypse and got every American a car and garage by rigging the world markets and protecting the world with our Navy and every country has to go through us to technologically advance, or you are un-American? Tongue and cheek here, but this is seriously the proposition.
This is the exact decision that was made and accelerated by our military during wartime. This is our playbook.
Well that and they blatantly steal from other companies, disregard copyrights and patents, and have the backing of the Chinese government protecting them from any real repercussions.
They don’t even try to hide it with their product naming. Take the “MateBook X Pro” for example - https://consumer.huawei.com/en/laptops/matebook-x-pro/
Yeah, well, no, stop. Facebook and social networks are regularly taking punches in the face and the US never prevented vkontact, mastodon or other clone to develop. There isn't a moratorium on social networks and public agreement to "limit the scope of our arsenal".
Mercenary groups (ie blackwater), Palantir, for-profit prisons, Tech companies complying with federal warrants, so-on. I will give you that it's not 1:1, and I think that's a fair counterpoint to people who don't trust the US.
That's whataboutism.
i assume this is part of the tongue-in-cheek, as ours is the only country to use nuclear bombs in war, so history is against trusting "our side" (generally don't like dichotomizing, but doing so here for expediency). with that said, our political institutions have so far been resiliant enough to resist the "mad man with red button" scenario, even with some poor choices of chief executives.
in any case, i generally agree that none of these companies really deserves our trust, regardless of political or geographic affiliation. like tv/internet providers or mobile telecom, vigilance is warranted as they should be considered hostile actors (in that they don't share your interests, not literally violence).
I think journalists publish these articles not because they're (consciously) following the playbook, but because it's what sells.
Maybe people want to read stories about Russian "enemies" more than they want to see stories about American "enemies".
Or maybe journalists have the best intentions and they know the privacy battle is lost against Facebook, Instagram, Amazon. but it's not yet lost against the Russians etc.
Like bombing Japan with nuclear weapons and murdering thousands of people?
What's happening now is going on under a different set of paradigms. If you approach today's geopolitics or military considerations with a cold war mindset you will miss things out. Globalization has happened and that changes a lot of things.
This is exactly what they said before WWI.
This specific way FaceApp resonates in mass and social media is quite telling.
Can you elaborate on the IRA == state actor part?
Were you thinking the Irish Republican Army?
Of course, to do it well, you'd probably want to start doing it before anybody submitted your real photo, then just submit a fake picture at random intervals for perpetuity.
An alternate variation on this is flooding them with fake people and fake names to make their real database worth less.
As an American, it matters to me whether the company doing the spying is located in California or Russia. If you're Russian, you might particularly care if the company in question is in California instead of Russia.
Russia is a hyper regressive, anti liberal, anti democratic, low human rights, dictatorship. My interests are particularly not served by allowing companies from Russia to spy on me.
Russia is also on the other side of the globe, has a GDP that is less than Italy (despite having way more people and land), and is, essentially, irrelevant outside of online trolling and Agi-Prop.
Meanwhile the person who is going to kick down my door is a US citizen, as is the person who is going to vote to take away my healthcare.
But anyway, Russia can't hurt me as much as the US can, so I take the opposite stance from you. I'm much more wary of my own government spying on me, since they can hurt me a lot more easily than some country on the other side of the Earth.
Because they've also mishandled the private data of Americans. Similarly to the NSA stuff, Americans appear to be fine with it if it is done on their behalf to the rest of the world, but are outraged when they experience it. If FB operated differently in the US, I'm sure the US press would be much more sympathetic with regards to their shenanigans in Europe.
So if you want to teach people about how and why data is important it is easier to do so when using Russia an an example (assuming you're a Westerner). Most people still have a fair amount of trust in US companies and don't believe they would abuse their power. Call it tribalism it whatever, but that's how it is.
But to us in tech it's pretty obvious that even if Snapchat or Facebook never abused their power (lol, I know) that that kind of data is likely to end up in the hands of the Russians anyway. So it's just easier to talk about data when the big bad wolf abuses it. But I'd also use this opportunity to talk to others about the parallels that we have here and the responsibility of the tech giants.
I grew up getting a lot of "evil commies" messages in US American media and I'm not even in USA (I'm from UK).
Saying this doesn't mean I condone what the US is doing with Latin Americans right now, but the way you frame it suggests that China and Russia aren't doing things that many of us in the West find reprehensible. They are authoritarian regimes after all. (Again, that's not saying the West doesn't also do these things, but I do think there is a clear difference in degrees. I don't think my belief is uncommon either).
More importantly, the comment comes off like we shouldn't criticize them. Why not? (We should also criticize the West, because frankly that an essential part of democracy)
Our greatest responsibility is our own nation. Those who try to engender righteous indignation in us about other nations are usually the ones who benefit most from our own worst deeds and practices.
And even then, the propaganda can turn on a dime. Rambo III, where Stallone more or less single-handedly beats the Russians in Afghanistan, has this message in their closing credits:
> "This film is dedicated to the gallant mujahedeen of Afghanistan"
Blatant ignorance of the divisions within the militant groups fighting Russian presence, not to mention rivalries between clan leaders who actually lived in Afghanistan and Saudi-funded foreign fighters looking to establish a foothold in the country.
After 9/11, that message was removed from VHS and DVDs of the film. I remember seeing the TV syndicated version many years back that had the message intact.
There's more than one reason for that, here is one that might be easy to overlook when someone is critizising USA with good reason:
America is not perfect but as a citizen and compared to the bad old commies it was mostly really good.
Between this:
>> ... when someone is critizising USA with good reason:
and this:
>> ... but as a citizen and compared to the bad old commies it was mostly ...
I feel my comment is still pretty safe.
You see, there is often a reason I use all those weasel words; otherwise it would be hard to poknt out that something can be far from ideal and something else can still be really much worse.
"The panic about FaceApp’s old-person filter isn’t wrong, exactly. It’s just tinged with xenophobia and devoid of context."
snap is a scarier but most people dont care since its so ingrained into their lives... for whatever reason I never understood.. but my friends used love it even while I warned them how stupid it was so use snap in the first place if you cared about privacy
what happens to snap.inc/your data when the userbase drops off completely.. inevitably like every other social media..
1. https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/17/faceapp-gets-federal-atten...
Looks like it removes geotagging en-masse but not per-application. You can also remove EXIF from specific photos but that's tedious.
“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.”
Social media networks like Facebook and Snapchat aren't like this.
Correct. They're not that terse with their terms. You'd have to read so. many. paragraphs. to figure out they're doing the same thing.
> We do not claim ownership of your content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) on or in connection with our Service, you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings).[1]
Conversely in Russia and China they are authoritarian and the cultures don't tend to speak out as much about these things. Hence where they are at. FaceApp might just use my data for advertising, but I don't know that. It's harder to find out post hoc. There is no legal means for me to ensure things are done properly. There is no way for me to push for data to be used in better ways. There is no accountability.
And that's the big difference. Accountability.
It's just what happens when you're a new hot social app.
In my brief usage of other social media apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Each photo you decide to share is opt-in.
The article also mentioned they run a job to continuously check in. Not sure if that’s to capture current GPS info, or to continually grab new photos. That seems a bit overzealous for what the app reportedly does. (editing pictures of your face)
Do the other social networks give themselves permission to display your photo anywhere they want? Or only via the channels you specifically request (i.e. to your friends)?
That seems like a huge difference to me.
There are two possible conclusions to draw.
One is that the general public actually doesn’t care about privacy at all. It’s a niche concern.
The other is that the general public cares but is completely and utterly clueless about how to defend themselves, to the point that an app can literally say “give us your name and face and we can do whatever we want with it in perpetuity throughout the universe” and people will happily oblige.
I don’t know which one is correct but neither one is great.
I would bet hard earned money that the average person installed this application because a friend told them and they were curious. This bit about what happens to their image and what data does the app save locally verses pushing out to the network, etc. is something that never even crossed their mind. If there was a window with legalese they ignored it as they have been trained to do (by Microsoft, Apple and every other commercial software product they ever purchased). Certainly they didn't go clicking around and looking for it.
Because EULAs and "terms of service" and "privacy policy" are all bullshit that nobody reads and should not have legally binding consequences or obligations. Peope have come to treat those things like a simple OK button but the law says otherwise. This company could produce deep-fakes with users heads on them and claim it's OK by their ToS and they might be right.
Am I really going to change whatever is going on in my day because maybe, someday, some evil corporations will match my likes on twitter to my real-life preferences?
I'm aware of all that can be done with the data. I program for a living and have an 'internet' business. It's just that the claims made here in HN make it sound as if everyone is retarded for giving away their 'privacy'.
We are asking the general population to give up tangible benefits for hypothetical downsides. It's just not convincing enough for people to change their habits. Get in their shoes. HNers mostly can't because we cannot imagine what it's like to see technical details as a burden. Most people don't have the knowledge to make safeguarding their privacy 'a breeze' (multiple identities/passwords/oss/avoiding gmail/etc).
Usually the medical test thing is enough to shut them up.
Anyway there are many such example arguments around the internet, just DuckDuckGo "nothing to hide". There's even a Wikipedia article about it [1].
Edit: Oh, I often give Uber's deleted posts about how they know their users had one-night stands as an example too. See [2] and [3] for one of the deleted posts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument [2] https://money.cnn.com/2014/11/25/technology/uber-prostitutes... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20140827195715/http://blog.uber....
The only argument I've had even a little success with is "it makes it easier for identity thieves to get and use your CC / bank info". That usually get a pause before "oh well my bank has fraud protection".
Anyway, I was going with "defeatist" mostly because it reminded me of an attitude I personally sometimes display when it comes to being overweight: "I already ate above my maintenance window today, I might as well just eat everything in the pantry and fridge and order some family-size pizzas". So, "I've already failed once, might as well keep failing."
Moreover, their actions do not affect only themselves, but also all of the people with whom they regularly interact, regardless of whether or not those people themselves have “chosen” to “opt in”.
There is only one solution to this problem, and it is political in nature.
Example article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/smarter-living/pay-secrec...
Or, it's not hard to imagine this even bring a completely legit company. I'm sure it's easy enough now for the Russian government to find something wrong they did and demand to see all the data they collected.
And finally, even if it's a legit company and they somehow have enough legal protection in Russia to about sharing data with the government, they're probably not the hardest security target in the world for any rogue operator to steal their data.
Bottom line, don't put all your trust in a ToS.
I know plenty of people that think this way.
I know my uncle Doug would pay for it.
Like any app, you launch it and you accept the EULA. Then it asks you for permission to use your camera and for your contacts: it makes sense you want to take selfies and share them.
That's it, now all your data belong to them. There is no functional difference between an app that will siphon all your private data and an app that won't.
for the vast majority of users, at no point did they stop and ponder whether they were ok giving up their 'face' for a filter app.
The only way to know would be to read the terms, and even then if you are not a lawyer you won't see the traps (e.g. understanding that "User Content" actually refers to your face).
You don’t need to read the terms. You “just” need to assume nefarious intent unless demonstrated otherwise.
They expect their phone calls not to be recorded. They expect that their emails are treated with the same inviolability as their letters were. They expect their letters to be as they were before the advent of technologies that governments are now using to mass record the contents of letters without opening them, of which technologies and practices they have no knowledge.
All of these expectations, and many more, are now ritually violated in the most outrageous manner.
It isn’t the responsibility of the individual to combat every violation of his person. Not only is it an unreasonable expectation for society’s “default setting” to be the casual violation of its citizens, but it’s also literally impossible for even the richest, smartest, and most diligent among us to avoid getting screwed... in some way... when there are so, so, SO many ways to get screwed.
Because, in 2019, if your highest priority is NOT getting screwed, you might literally have to live alone in a cabin in the mountains.
Which is why you can take your atomic-individual libertarian “oh you “just” need to somehow avoid every omnipresent feature of contemporary life” and take a fucking hike.
I demand the right to walk to the grocery, buy a sandwich, walk to the park, eat the sandwich, and walk home, without having my minute-by-minute location invisibly and undetectably recorded and sent to ANY corp/gov, my purchase recorded and sent to ANY corp/gov, my face/gait/person scanned and analyzed by ANY corp/gov, etc. and so forth.
And I should have to take no special action for any of this, because this is the default setting.
It would have to be not overly restrictive limits, or you'd end up with a prop-65-like scenario.
Or hell, just make a standardized "Privacy Facts" panel.
For the vast majority of people—who are boring, non-activist, law-abiding citizens—the value they assign to privacy of things like name/face/products they're interested in is nonzero, but very low. They know their name/face, along with far more sensitive information, is already in a lot of databases that matter more than anything some random app developer can do, and they get some greater value from the marginal privacy impact of that same information ending up in one more place.
There's a good bit of research to support this. For example, there is a study showing you'd have to pay someone on average $1,000+ [1] to give up their Facebook account for year, suggesting that's the value they assign to the service. At the same time, if you ask them how much they'd be willing to pay for an ads-free, more privacy conscious version of Facebook, studies show only a small fraction would pay even $15/month [2]. In other words, people are making a conscious assessment that their privacy is less valuable than the services they can get by giving it up.
We make these kind of trade-offs and decisions every day. It's much the same reason people can be both deeply concerned about child labor in the Global South, but still make the decision to buy the cheaper version of a product rather than the one they know is ethically sourced, even if they could afford the latter. These decisions certainly have societal impacts that are worth contemplating and being concerned about, but it's wrong and infantilizing to simply dismiss people's conscious and rational (for them) choices.
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] https://www.vox.com/2018/4/11/17225328/facebook-ads-free-pai...
It seems to me that you’re complaining about infantilizing people’s choices while simultaneously telling us that, yes, people indeed don’t care about privacy very much.
There is no such thing as an "ad-free, privacy conscious" version of Facebook. If Facebook offered such a product, we'd have a rough idea about what privacy is worth to people in terms of money. All the Facebook "alternatives" are not Facebook.
Of course, if you look at history that can change overnight. Or actually it won't, it's more likely a "boiling frog" kinda thing where nobody's aware of anything bad happening until it's too late.
I just pictured 4chan hacking into a photo database and putting people's faces on a bunch of billboards.
Surely if this happened to more people, the public would become more privacy-conscious, no?
They post their name and picture to Instagram 12 times a day. Most people have public profiles so there is no new risk. Of course by the time every street corner has facial recognition running "for our safety", it will be too late.
Even as someone who knows the risks, this doesn't scare me as much as DNA testing. Even worse is that if any of my relatives do it, I'm just as screwed. There is also the "let's all install hackable video cameras on our front doors" problem. Clever fear mongering to prevent a random package being stolen that is already insured and will be resent automatically. Instead we paid to create our own surveillance state.
This is I think the most scary possibility. If you think faceapp is processing this in the app with your phone's hardware, learning that they save all pictures sounds like a vast conspiracy and not so believable.
However, if you understand the technology and that most things online are not processed client side, the privacy implications are suddenly obvious because of course the company will keep that data that passes through their hardware. No shareholder will let money be left on the table so all data you put online should be assumed to be kept for later profit.
People have to be better educated on how the software they use every day actually works, at least in broad strokes. This can come in a high school media/technology literacy class or something.
Until that day comes, we have two classes of people: those who understand how the tech they use works and makes a company money, and those who will be forever manipulated by the first group so long as they have a dollar or a right to vote. It's a hard problem to overcome when so many technology companies are entirely dependent on profit from people's continued ignorance and tech illiteracy.
But, I do think they would care if their photos ended up on a billboard or used in marketing material without their explicit permission.
Most understand that the company needs some kind of access to photos for the app to actually do anything, but there is a limit.
It's not that people don't care; privacy is probably undervalued in the context of making privacy vs. convenience/utility decisions. (Digital) privacy's value isn't really tangible until it's actively used against you.
People don't care that much, but also don't realise the implications that would make them care marginally more in some instances.
Google already have millions of face tags from Picasa, etc.; Facebook has had image tagging for ages; ... governments already have all that data from passports and driving licensee and ID cards ... so why not give it up again. It's a drop in the ocean situation.
Russia having my face data is likely to make much less difference to me than someone in UK having it, which might also make people not care. [But of course they can sell the data on.]
The latest case -- going beyond anything I can parody -- is this first-person NYTimes tell-all about a married couple being overheard in the midst of a sexual morning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/well/family/when-our-daug...
Why bother sounding alarms about Alexa, Google Voice, etc. perhaps listening to our bedroom conversations? There's a slice of the public that will go to a lot of trouble (write article, etc.) to make sure that such moments become public.
There is an established term for this innate human trait: "dancing pigs".
> In computer security, the "dancing pigs" is a term or problem that describes computer users' attitudes to computer security. It states that users will continue to pick an amusing graphic even if they receive a warning from security software that it is potentially dangerous. In other words, users choose their primary desire features without considering the security.
The smartphone is giving them funny shit. Any permissions prompts or legalese that occur in the meantime are incidental.
I think the devs of this app need a slap on the wrist for being party to this nonsense as well.
No harm, no foul until the signs are visible, and it's probably too late.
So Faceapp knows "There's a person with this name who looks like this". Was that supposed to be a secret?
I'm concerned about privacy too, but it seems like some people just want to hide under a rock for their entire lives. I don't know how anyone manages to leave the house if having people see your face and know your name is a serious concern.
In consumer devices the face data is stored only on-device, so any privacy concerns are defended by "it's not sending your face to the cloud" and/or "don't use it if you don't trust it"
At least with fingerprints you have 9 extra passwords you can use if your index finger print leaks (I bet my prints are already out there just from getting pre employment background checks from workplaces with hulking old school IT bureaucracies and a workforce pounded daily by phishing attempts).
I think it's the linkage of the name and the face. Either of those things alone don't seem like private information, but together, I would argue they are private. I can't provide a good reason as to why I think that yet though.
All I'm wondering is how this would play out in a dystopian future where I'm recognised by everyone wherever I go.
And in some cases they might even have additional information maybe in a probabilistic fashion. Like what kind of clothes I prefer or the kinds of food I like. And that would be the good version.
The worse scenario would be that some malicious actor puts all this together to play on others' fears.
The worst case, of course, being big brother!
All this in under a minute and yet here we are panicking over a Russian Company that can do whatever it wants with your face pictures.
Ok.
Thats because he needs to be able to be contacted to gain outsized benefits from society. Writing about this stuff "first" gets you tapped for corporate executive roles or lucrative expert witness roles in judicial proceedings. It is called "thought leadership"
He is much more objective about doing this than malleable people fearing missing out
Go look up other ToS for similar services, it is almost verbatim the same wording.
My problem is that this is the "least amount" of permissions to realistically make a media centric app, because legally, there's nothing stopping them from abusing the hell out of these rights.
It just feels so futile to even care.
The best I figure I can do is to keep the apps I used locked down if possible - and to avoid "stupid" apps that clearly have little purpose other then dataharvesting.
Cool Selfy app? Ehh pass.
Your name is on your mail, your census, your driving licence, you provide your name and address to companies all the time. your name and address is now public information.
If someone can tie your public face to your public name then thats public information.
you dont like it, get a PO box and wear a mask all the time.
I haven't tested the app myself yet and probably will not.
This is not new.
I've been using FaceApp since its release.
There are a lot of other similar apps that I've used in the past. Especially makeup simulator apps. BeautyPlus, YouCal, InstaBeauty, BeautyCam, Facetune, Photo Plastic, Visage Lab, etc.
So, it's purely Xenophobia then.
It is unfortunate that this fear extends to private Russian businesses, but it's difficult to discern how separate entities really are in tightly managed countries.
I totally agree this is getting into some cold-war-era territory though... US vs. Huawei has a similar vibe.
Photos that could also easily be scraped from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram etc.
Snapchat's are also very similar in quality. Before this whole craze about the old filter, people trended on the gender change filter. That one was on Snapchat and quickly became a meme. It was even more amazing since it was a video filter, so you could move around and stay as your opposite gender.
Furthermore, don't people have rights over their likeness that overruled certain rights the copyright holder has over the image? For example, I would own the copyright if I met some celebrity on the street and took their photo. That doesn't mean I can freely use that image in my advertising.
This is false, you can just take a pic and never give it access to your gallery. If the authors are lying about something so trivial, what else do journalists lie about? That's why I don't trust them.
> 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.
This is standard language that is generally enforceable. It is the license that is perpetual, not the contract.
I've noticed in countries with Natural Rights frame works for their law that typically contracts that commit /an individual/ to work when it's not "bonded" in some way are interpreted as slavery and nullified.
e.g. If I agree to get paid $100k lump-sum today to work for you for 10 years at no more compensation, and at year 2 I decide to renege on the contract, no Natural-Rights framework court is going to enforce that.
But if I sell my house to you (relinquishing ownership to you for an "unlimited time period") and I try to renege on the sale, it is going to be enforced.
- I am buying my house for perpetuity, not leasing it for a limited period
- I'm a photographer, you're a model, I want a model release that's unlimited or it's not worth my time and risk to deal with you (this is usually framed as "rights" or "license", but signed in form of a "contract", similar to what the FaceApp would likely do?)
You're buying a house for as long as you can afford property taxes. :P
Also if any lawyers read this - If "perpetual" isn't binding, would say "The next 200 years" be binding? It's an explicit time period but effectively still "indefinite" for the lifetime of an individual.
And that is how you get bigoted algorithms. This will just select for older white men due to various socioeconomic reasons.
So when downloading an App it will ask would you want to run this in an isolated environment? and you can, so if it tries to scan over your photo gallery it will have an empty folder etc..
That said, many apps need access to the photo gallery - say I want to put a screenshot into discord. The issue is that now Discord has access to ALL of my photos.
There needs to be more scoping options. "Allow access to previous 12 photos while you're using the app" kinda deal.
Most apps don't make that obvious though, and imply that they need full photos access to work (Or they don't give options to use the system picker/system share sheet.)
- Discord can have a share sheet extension that is accessible from the popup that appears when you take a screenshot.
- You can copy and paste the image.
- the app can bring up a photo picker.
That's what Xposed Framework does exactly.
> allow it access a dummy, empty folder to read from
That's what Xposed XPrivacyLua plugin does exactly.
There are issues of consent, of what is 'personal' data, of who 'owns' that data, of public vs. private, etc.
We've all been on this ride for a while now and it's not getting any more clear. If anything, it's getting more and more murky. Deepfakes are now able to be done on a laptop, essentially. EULAs are basically ghosts, the public cannot understand/see them but is terrorized by them at random. Privacy is meaningless despite it's proven requirement for proper adolescent/human development.
I think we're in a time now where we need a new idea and a new way of doing things and thinking about our world, where a paradigm shift is required.
Our ideas of personal data, of public data, of private data, of consent, and of ownership are no long going to work. The ethics aside, the old ways of doing things are not workable anymore.
What does a flawed, yet workable, solution look like?
On the other hand, personally I'm freaking out whenever my phone tries to upload photos to "cloud" without even asking or just a small prompt (which can be easily misclicked). So apps like that are out of the question!
Yet, Forbes & others talk about FaceApp.
A lawyer rewrites Instagrams terms of service to one page easy to read english. http://dontai.com/wp/2017/01/10/a-plain-speak-end-user-agree...
Here is a service that explains common terms of services for web sites. https://tosdr.org/
Information Economy should directly incentivize those who share their identity, I couldnt imagine some stanger in the street asking me for all this information, and me giving it without a doubt. It is scary but it's normalized.
Russian company has the ability to identify the person.
My guess: Probably using already existing KGB software in the backend.
Another data broker, now of people's faces. I am surprised that this isn't yet done by the free make-up apps or even by snap chat.
I guess there are people crawling Facebook and probably other profile services like LinkedIn, etc. But probably crawling these is not legal to resell.