Did you Try this Application that has Gone Viral on Internet Overnight?

If you were surfing on Social media in the last 48 hours, you must have definitely come across the photos of so many people and celebrities sharing a selfie of their 60-year-old self. What is that? 

Chill, these guys are creating the pictures using the Old Filter of the app called “FaceApp”. This app allows you to click a selfie, or upload any favourite picture of yours on the app so that you can test various filters on that picture. The app uses Artificial Intelligence to alter your face according to the filter you choose, say, adding a smile, changing your hairstyle, trying various hair colors, and seeing how you will look like decades from now. 

The app has been successful in gaining up to 80 million users after all the celebrities and influencers tried the ageing filter and posted their smashing pictures on Instagram. Let us take a look at some:

1. Arjun Kapoor Aging Fine as Wine

2. Varun Dhawan Being a Handsome Old Man

3. Indian Cricket Team Never Takes a Back Seat

4. Kim K Got no Chill

5. Memes are a Part of Every Trend

FaceApp was developed by a team of Russian and it has been popular since its inception. But viral caught hold of this application this year, the reason being the “appealing filters”. This wave of popularity has taken this app on the top spot in the play-store after Jonas Brothers and Drake also gave it a shout out with their pictures. 

But, lately something like this came up:

The app got shots fired on it, because of the privacy concerns that came afloat. Even Chuck Schumer asked the FBI and the FTC to investigate the potential "national security and privacy risks” that were associated with the application.

To which FaceApp CEO Yaroslav Goncharov stated the following:

 “We are receiving a lot of inquiries regarding our privacy policy and therefore, would like to provide a few points that explain the basics:

1. FaceApp performs most of the photo processing in the cloud. We only upload a photo selected by a user for editing. We never transfer any other images from the phone to the cloud.
2. We might store an uploaded photo in the cloud. The main reason for that is performance and traffic: we want to make sure that the user doesn't upload the photo repeatedly for every edit operation. Most images are deleted from our servers within 48 hours from the upload date.
3. We accept requests from users for removing all their data from our servers. Our support team is currently overloaded, but these requests have our priority. For the fastest processing, we recommend sending the requests from the FaceApp mobile app using "Settings->Support->Report a bug" with the word "privacy" in the subject line. We are working on the better UI for that.
4. All FaceApp features are available without logging in, and you can log in only from the settings screen. As a result, 99% of users don't log in; therefore, we don't have access to any data that could identify a person.
5. We don't sell or share any user data with any third parties.
6. Even though the core R&D team is located in Russia, the user data is not transferred to Russia.

Additionally, we'd like to comment on one of the most common concerns: all pictures from the gallery are uploaded to our servers after a user grants access to the photos. We don't do that. We upload only a photo selected for editing. You can quickly check this with any of network sniffing tools available on the internet.”

We would still recommend to not share your personal details with any third party app while installing an App. Be very cautious with the terms and conditions so that the fun never gets interrupted with the privacy breaching. Happy selfie-ing!