Category: Smartphones

FaceApp

tinsleyNET Admin
FaceApp Icon

You can’t have helped but see the FaceApp images appearing on people’s social media, photos edited by AI to make them look older, younger or to swap genders.

You’ve probably also heard that the app is stealing your data in the background and uploading it to Russian servers.

We take a look at the app and dig into what it’s actually doing with your data.

The App

FaceAppMockup

FaceApp is available on Android and iPhone, the website is https://www.faceapp.com
Privacy policy is https://www.faceapp.com/privacy

FaceApp was first released in 2017.

The app is available as a free download, with limited functionality, and a pro version with more filters to use.

FaceApp uses AI to manipulate images, making the subject look older, younger, add a smile and so on.

Why does Russia want my data?

A tweet from an app developer suggested that FaceApp was uploading massive quantities of photos from users phones without their permission, this was later quoted in an article on 9TO5Mac and other publications, unfortunately they didn’t actually check if the facts were true.

So just to help clear things up, the app is NOT stealing your data, well not in any way that Apple and Google are already doing.

FaceApp Older

What is the app doing?

The app will upload images to their servers, but only the ones you send for the AI to edit. No background uploading takes place, and only the individual photos you select are sent.

Using cloud servers to process the images will help keep the app size down, increase the speed of the image AI processing and helps keep their AI technology away from prying eyes.

The servers your photos are sent to appear to be based in America, although the company that makes FaceApp is based in Russia. This is not uncommon, as server costs and reliability in America are likely to be better than Russian based server.

The company states that most photos are removed from their servers after 48 hours. Like many other companies, they have a term that states any images sent to their servers may be used by them, royalty-free. Some may find it worrying that their photos might be used to promote this app, but this is not an unusual term in such situations. Twitter has similar terms in their usage T&C’s for example.

It’s likely that the images you send for processing are being used to help improve the AI technology used. Some have suggested this could be used to improve facial recognition algorithms, but In a statement to the BBC the firm’s chief executive, Yaroslav Goncharov, said “No, we don’t use photos for facial recognition training, Only for editing pictures.”

A French security researcher looked into what the app did when you used it, the technical details can be read in his twitter thread here: https://twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/1151270788357603328

How accurate are the FaceApp results?

There’s an article on the BBC News website where they test the app using some well known celebrities, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Morgan Freeman and Sir Ian McKellen – you can judge for yourself the quality of the results.

FaceApp Younger

Mobiles, Tablets and BYOD

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Not just a phone

1980sMobile
Early mobile phones were big, heavy, and only had 20 minutes battery life.

Mobile devices are so much more than just a phone. In many cases, phone calls are the least used feature of a modern mobile. Having access to mobile internet and internet based apps for social media are by far the most commonly used features on them.

Modern smartphones can replace a lot of the functionality of a small laptop, with phone docks giving access to a large HD screen, full sized keyboard and mouse, the ability to hot desk and take your phone/computer with you is making their use in business more seamless.

Tablets

While smartphones have become a ubiquitous accessory on most people, the tablet has taken it’s place as the replacement of the home desktop PC.

Less portable than the smartphone, but with a bigger screen and a familiar operating system they are easy to get to grips with, and with apps like Microsoft Office being delivered over the internet, there’s less and less need for a traditional home PC or laptop.

BYOD

With the emergence of powerful personal smartphones and tablets, users began making use of the new mobility and doing a lot more data processing on their own devices. This is great for productivity but can be a security nightmare, how can you guarantee that the users own device is secure and that any apps they install are not going to steal your company data? And what if the device is lost,  how can you be sure that the user had a secure and strong password, or that company data was in encrypted storage on the device?

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is one of the most popular ‘your own device’ technology solutions that is now making its way across the workplace. Other variants such as CYOD (Choose Your Own Device) where the company let the user pick from a predetermined list of devices, POCE (Personally Owned, Company Enabled) where a your company manages the use of your personal device, and COPE (Company Owned, Personally Enabled) where your company supplies you with a device and you can use it for personal use.

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We can help you make the most of your mobile device. For personal users, that might mean securing the device against fraudulent activity, and for business it could mean designing and deploying a policy to manage BYOD in the workplace.

Whatever your need, we can advise and implement the security and systems you need to manage your portable devices.