You know those images of athletes looking like they’d aged 40 years filling up your social media timelines on Tuesday?
It turns out those are courtesy of a Russian company called Wireless Labs. And they’re collecting information from users. And a powerful U.S. senator is now pleading with the FBI and FTC to do something about it.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, New York) wrote a letter Wednesday night expressing concern that the mobile app FaceApp “could pose national security and privacy risks for millions of U.S. citizens.”
“I ask that the FBI assess whether the personal data uploaded by millions of Americans onto FaceApp may be finding its way into the hands of the Russian government or entities with ties to the Russian government,” Schumer wrote. “If so, I would urge that steps be immediately taken by the FBI to mitigate the risk presented by the aggregation of this data.”
In case you took the last couple of days off from the internet, here’s what all the rage is about.
Athletes went nuts for FaceApp
Athletes were among the most active users of the app that takes a photo and spits out an impressive approximation of what somebody might look like in a few decades.
LeBron James was into it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz_0YxfgmAp/
A post shared by LeBron James (@kingjames) on
Stephen Curry was into it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz_y3IQFsE2/
A post shared by Wardell Curry (@stephencurry30) on
Russell Wilson was into it.
JuJu Smith-Schuster was into it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz_qvQGlysG/
A post shared by JuJu Smith-Schuster (@juju) on
Entire teams were into it.
You were probably into it
Judging by the 100-million-plus downloads on Google Play and top ranking in the iOS app store in 121 countries, there’s a good chance that you too, as an internet consumer, were into it.
If so, you’ve given Wireless Labs permission to do with your data and image pretty much whatever it sees fit.
User agreement sparks concern
On Wednesday, after all the rage over how cool the app was had died down, the fine print of its user agreement started to make the rounds.
Here’s one of the primary snippets that raised alarm bells:
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.
That doesn’t sound good. Though it probably doesn’t deviate much from any of the countless user agreements the average internet user has blindly agreed to.
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