FaceApp and Privacy; Should We Worry About This App?

Concerns have been raised about the security of the app following the virtualization of images made with Facebook (FaceApp) in cyberspace. Can we trust Facebook?

If you’ve been active on Facebook and Twitter in the last few days, especially Instagram, you’ve probably seen images of users using the Facebook app to build them.

Facebook, not a new app, released in year 3, is now suddenly gaining popularity, and many users are putting interesting filters on them, such as aging.

Meanwhile, as fast as Facebook became famous, there were big and important questions about its privacy for people.

These days, Facebook is the new trend of cyberspace and almost everyone is using it.

Not bad to know that Facebook is in fact an Android and iOS operating system that captures your images and relies on superb realistic filters, relying on its superb artificial intelligence.

Of all the filters, the age-old filter is the most popular because it is available in the free version of Facebook and anyone who has installed it can use it.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook also has a Pro version, which you have to pay to get all the filters open.

To be honest, the filtering performance of Facebook’s age is great and can deliver convincing results for the user.

فیس اپ / FaceApp

How does Facebook work?

The magic that Facebook applies to your face comes from the use of machine learning to color the truth.

Machine learning is a new technique that is nowadays widely used in the field of computing.

The results from Facebook are not very accurate

Simply put, in machine learning, instead of trying to explain the “meaning” of getting older for a computer and giving code to understand wrinkles and whitening hair and the like,

The computer itself can “learn” what thousands of older people are looking at, and use what they know to apply aging filters.

The results of machine learning, even if they are not quite accurate, are at least glorious at first glance.

If you give Facebook an old adolescent photo and see the results in reality, you’ll notice a lot of differences, but in any case, the way Facebook works is great.

فیس اپ / FaceApp

What data does Facebook collect?

That’s an important question that has already caught the minds of a lot of people. As fast as Facebook could go viral, privacy concerns about it increased.

Concerns were raised that Chuck Schumer, a US senator, had formally requested the FBI to investigate the app.

In addition, there are many prelike posts on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that have seriously urged users to use Facebook with caution.

Facebook has access to your phone’s gallery image

Part of the public’s concern is the fact that Facebook needs to have access to the user’s image gallery to work.

Of course,

do not forget that many users around the world have provided such access to applications such as Instagram and the like.

What really worries people is summarized here: Since Facebook has access to all your gallery photos,

The developer may, if it so wishes, request its application to store all of your photos on its servers or provide them to government agencies. What reinforces this concern,

This is where the headquarters of a company called the Wireless Lab, located in St. Petersburg, Russia.

فیس اپ / FaceApp

Facebook uploads all your photos to its servers?

Despite initial concerns, until now the evidence suggests that Facebook is doing quite well in privacy and not uploading all of your gallery photos to its servers.

In contrast, several other companies, analyzing Facebook, have found that all that this app uploads to its servers are the same photos that the user chooses to add to them.

The magic of Facebook happens in servers, not your phone

You might ask why these photos are uploaded? Unlike application filters like Instagram, the process of filtering images on Facebook takes place in the cloud.

In other words, all the app itself does is upload the image you want to the server and then download the result from the server and deliver it to you.

This means that the magic of Facebook on your photo happens not on the phone or the app itself, but on the servers.

This is how Facebook works in two ways:

Such accurate processing is very difficult and largely impossible in the applications themselves. Because of the immense power of machine learning these days,

That is,

it is possible to perform processes related to it with all the power of computers available on site servers (if needed).

In fact,

thanks to machine learning, there is a lot of processing power available and the app is not dependent on your phone’s limited processing power.

This can allow developers to constantly improve their product. They can use all the photos that people have uploaded to Facebook,

Use the app to streamline machine learning to make the results more realistic than before.

In addition,

since the whole process of image processing takes place in the cloud, developers can always update and improve its filters without directly updating the app itself.

Facebook developers have claimed that all images uploaded to the servers will be erased after a few days.

The reason for the multi-day data retention on Facebook’s servers is probably to avoid specific image processing over and over.

Imagine two people uploading a special image in two different places, such as a special image of Cristiano Ronaldo.

In this case, Facebook servers only process this image once and do not have to process it multiple times.

Considering the global popularity of Facebook, filters on celebrity images can happen hundreds of thousands of times a day.

فیس اپ / FaceApp

What are the tips on the Facebook rules page?

One of the elements that has played an important role in bolstering security concerns

about Facebook is the Terms and Conditions page that has attracted much attention.

At first glance, the tips on this page look very strict. This part of the page states that you give Facebook a permanent

and indefinite license to use your User Content in any way it wishes.
And make changes to them and publish and distribute them without having to pay any compensation.

Also, in another section:

When you upload your User Content to our servers, you understand that this content and any related information

(Such as username or location or profile picture) will be publicly viewable.

Reading these sentences on the Facebook rules page may be scary at first glance, but one important thing to keep in mind,

That is, these rules are not very different from those used by other popular apps.

The only big difference, of course, is that unlike what Facebook and Google give you, there is no easy way to delete your data from Facebook.

Now, to erase your data, you have to email this app’s support email and submit your request in writing. Facebook’s developers have said they intend to simplify the process in the future.

Another concern is that Facebook’s approach to doing advertising,
It contradicts new stringent laws called the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Determining whether Facebook is in conflict with the GDPR is up to the judges and it is best not to comment on it.

فیس اپ / FaceApp

Should we worry about the Russian developer of Facebook?

Perhaps the fact that wireless is considered a Russian corporation

is one of the main reasons American politicians pay particular attention to Facebook’s privacy.

It is not bad to say that these concerns are at times reasonable.

Wireless lips are not dependent on the Russian government

Remember, Russia has a history of using technology to interfere in international affairs,

from interfering in the US election to hacking the Ukrainian electricity grid that led to massive blackouts in the country.

Given this, some people claim that Russia collects information from people, especially Westerners, through the production of Facebook.

So far, there is no evidence that the Russian government or army is gathering information from Facebook.

Also, there was no reported dependency between Wireless Lab and the Russian government.

Also,

it’s interesting to note that Wireless Lips has repeatedly stated that it stores its users’ data on Amazon and Google (outside of Russia) cloud servers.

فیس اپ / FaceApp

Given all this, should we worry about Facebook?

Finally,

let’s not forget that the way public opinion is treated with Facebook is very similar to the way other apps are used every day.

Do you think when we download Instagram,

do we have to worry about the US government wanting to access our gallery images?

What about other apps like TikTok that are becoming more and more popular with people?

Tic-tac, which is now very popular among the young, belongs to one of the Chinese companies,

so one can look at Facebook and Instagram,

Take a look at the tick. Although TikTuck has not been able to come up with languages ​​like Facebook yet,

there is little discussion about the security concerns associated with it.

The sudden popularity of Facebook again tells us that before using any app,

we have to carefully review its privacy settings and rules, not just those of popular apps.

 

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