Before downloading an app or a PDF, do you ever read the Terms and Conditions? If not, you might be unintentionally signing up for trouble, like millions of users have after they agreed to the Terms of Service of FaceApp. The viral app lets people change facial expressions, looks, and their age. However, in exchange, the company owns all the rights to the images.
Since its launch, over 100 million people have downloaded FaceApp from Google Play. The app is currently the top-ranked app on the iOS App Store in 121 countries, as App Annie reports.
Based on the Terms of Service, people still own their “user content” (read: their face). However, FaceApp owns a never-ending and irrevocable royalty-free license as well to do anything they want with the photograph. AThis includes in front of whoever they wish.
The condition reads:
“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.”
FaceApp is not the only company to collect user’s data, as Facebook has been doing the same for years. Therefore, we now know that the data that is collected is rarely used for assumed purposes. Moreover, that data is not always stored securely, which can make the average individual vulnerable to hackers and identity theft.
The lesson here is that it is smart to be wary when an app wants access and a license to your digital content or identify. As former Rackspace manager Rob La Gesse explained:
“To make FaceApp actually work, you have to give it permissions to access your photos – ALL of them. But it also gains access to Siri and Search …. Oh, and it has access to refreshing in the background – so even when you are not using it, it is using you.”
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