The internet’s latest trend quickly spiraled into its latest scare. FaceApp which first became popular in 2017  has once again resurged in popularity thanks to the #FaceAppChallenge trending on social media. 

According to its description on the app store, FaceApp uses a type of artificial intelligence to “transform your face”. Their “transformations” range from adding facial hair to gender swaps. However the app is most notorious for its aging feature, which takes a user’s photo and morphs it into an image of them several decades into the future.

The feature has captivated the attention of everyone, including celebrities like Shenseea, but the app itself has once again raised the eyebrows of many critics. 

The concern stems from the fact that FaceApp’s privacy policy leaves a disturbing amount of ambiguity when it comes on to what happens to its users’ data.

Since the rise of the trend, many claimed that FaceApp might actually be selling user data to third parties — or worse colluding with the Russian government to spy on its user base of over 80 million people. 

The claims were supposedly backed by the fact that FaceApp is owned by Russian company, as well as various statements from their privacy policy— which hasn’t been updated in over two years—  such as “We [FaceApp] may share User Content and your information with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that FaceApp is part of, or that become part of that group…” 

Another standout was the part which stated that “FaceApp cannot ensure the security of any information you transmit to FaceApp or guarantee that information on the Service may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed.”

To any well-read person this among other claims against the service would raise many red flags. 

However, despite the many raised against the application there is no concrete evidence to support the belief that one’s data is at (serious) risk. 

Many experts have stood in support of the company and have debunked the idea that FaceApp may be disclosing users’ private information to other companies — or the Russian government. One such p

erson, Will Strafach, CEO of the iOS firewall app ‘Guardian’, has claimed that through his own experiments he has discovered no outstandingly egregious activity being committed by the application. He does state however, that while FaceApp does not seem to be collecting data outside of that which is uploaded directly to the app, it may upload single images in order to apply filters on the server-side.

Nevertheless, the outcries from concerned users prompted FaceApp themselves to make a public statement. 

They confirmed that they upload singular photos to the cloud so that the image may be processed and the filters applied. And also that they may store an uploaded photo in order to improve performance and reduce traffic.

However, FaceApp highlighted the fact that they do accept requests from users to remove their data from the servers. Also, because most of FaceApp’s features are available without the need for users to log in, they do not have access to any information that may be used to identify an individual. 

Finally, to dispel rumours that they were in coalition with Russia, FaceApp made it clear that user data is not transferred to Russia.

At the end of the day FaceApp may just be another fun application created for no other purpose except user entertainment. And while it’s good that users are taking their privacy more seriously, we shouldn’t let misinformation or over-exaggerations cause us to miss out on having fun.

So for now, I’d say it’s safe to continue having our fun with FaceApp, and if we are truly concerned about our privacy and misuse of our personal information— then we should probably delete our Facebook accounts.

 — Rolando Alberts