Along with the celebrities’ transformations using FaceApp, FaceApp itself has gone viral on the Internet. Just by uploading a picture of yourself, you can alter your facial expressions and hairstyles, or even change your gender and age. On one hand, users are obsessed with the software. On the other hand, critics are concerned about privacy.
If you are an active social media user, you’d notice your celebrity crushes uploading pictures of themselves in the future, including Gordon Ramsay from Master Chef, famous singer Charlie Puth and boy band Jonas Brothers. As the captions, Gordon Ramsay joked about him hosting the 50th season of Master Chef while Jonas Brothers kidded with their song ‘Year 3000’, saying they went on a trip to the Year 3000. Faceapp has taken over the Internet ever since.
Unlike other photo-editing apps, FaceApp does its magic on cloud. After receiving your picture, the system uploads the picture to the cloud-based unit for the transformation. When the transformation is all set, the edited version is then transferred back to your device. This sparked controversies upon the issue of privacy due to the nature of cloud as a storage unit. In other words, once pictures are uploaded to cloud, users are not able to delete it on their own.
Currently, FaceApp has 80 million users. For the massive number, senior United States Senator, Chunk Schumer, demanded FBI to check on FaceApp’s threats on national security and personal privacy. He doubted the app would enable third parties to invade US citizen’s privacy.
In response to Chuck, Yaroslav Goncharov, the CEO of FaceApp issued a statement, denying all accusations. He claimed that photos uploaded on FaceApp will be deleted from server within 48 hours. However, sceptics are holding reservations for the usage of clouds.
Only FaceApp itself would know whether it is selling us out. But what we know is that, according to a research conducted by computer security company, Kaspersky, 63% of users do not go through the terms and conditions thoroughly and 43% of users agree to all requests on access to information most of the time. To follow trends, we put our privacy and security on risks. Never have we noticed, we are exposed nakedly on the Internet.
If you have not tried FaceApp, you can download it here: (IOS / Android) Before you start, remember to read the terms and conditions!