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FaceApp Age Filter
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About
FaceApp Age Filter refers to an image-altering tool available in the photo editing application FaceApp, making photographs of humans uploaded by users appear older.
Origin
Launched in 2017, FaceApp is a mobile device application that allows users to edit photographs of humans. These edits include manipulating the age, race or gender of the subject.
While the app has featured aging features in the past, on July 9th and 10th, 2019, FaceApp updates its application for iTunes and Android, respectively according to iTunes[1] and APK4Fun.[2] These updates included "Even more performance improvements to Editor processing. Enjoy real-time results while slider moving!"
By July 12th, people on Instagram began using the hashtag #agechallenge[5] to catalog examples of photographs that had been edited using FaceApp's age filter. The earliest known example was posted by Instagram[6] user @fahadalaliwa. The post received more than 2,000 likes in four days (shown below). That day, others on Instagram begin using the #agechallenge hashtag.
Spread
On July 13th Egyptian actress Reem Elbaroudy posted a photograph on Instagram[3] of herself with the filter on. She tagged the photograph with the hashtag "#agechallenge." The post received more than 38,000 likes in four days (shown below, left). On the same day, Redditor [4] gymbez posted an image of their child with the filter on. The post received more than 230 points (85% upvoted) and 30 comments.
Numerous media outlets reported on the application's feature, including The Sun,[7] PopBuzz,[8] BoredPanda,[9] BuzzFeed, [10] Newsweek[11] and more.
Security Concerns
After the photo effect went viral, some online security researchers and reporters began voicing concerns about the app, how it works and its terms of service agreement. Twitter[12] user @ElizabethPW tweeted a piece of the terms of service agreement, explaining that users who have agreed to FaceApp's terms gave much more than one photograph to the company's servers. They wrote, "If you use #FaceApp you are giving them a license to use your photos, your name, your username, and your likeness for any purpose including commercial purposes (like on a billboard or internet ad)." The post received more than 16,000 retweets and 13,000 likes in 24 hours (shown below).
![If you use #FaceApp you are giving them a license to use your photos, your name, your username, and your likeness for any purpose including commercial purposes (like on a billboard or internet ad) -- see their Terms: ll AT&T Wi-Fi 7:15 PM 95% faceapp.com 4. Privacy Please refer to our Privacy Policy https://www.faceapp.com/privacy for information about how we collect, use and disclose information about you 5. User Content Our Services may allow you and other users to create, post, store and share content, including messages, text, photos, videos, software and other materials (collectively, "User Content"). User Content does not include user-generated filters. Except for the license you grant below, you retain all rights in and to your User Content, as between you and FaceApp. Further, FaceApp does not claim ownership of any User Content that you post on or through the Services 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. You grant FaceApp consent to use the User Content, regardless of whether it includes an individual's name, likeness, voice or persona, sufficient to indicate the individual's identity. By using the Services, you agree that the User Content may be used for commercial purposes. You further acknowledge that FaceApp's use of the User Content for commercial purposes will not result in any injury to you or to any person you authorized to act on its behalf. You acknowledge that some of the Services are supported by advertising revenue and may display advertisements and promotions, and you hereby agree that FaceApp may place such advertising and promotions on the Services or on, about, or in conjunction with your User Content. The manner, mode and extent of such advertising and promotions are subject to change without specific notice to you. You acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/513/829/d49.png "If you use #FaceApp you are giving them a license to use your photos, your name, your username, and your likeness for any pur")
Others, like Senate Chuck Schumer, voiced their concerns. Senator Schumer reached out to the FBI and the Federal Trade Commision to investigate the app, writing "It would be deeply troubling if the sensitive personal information of U.S. citizens was provided to a hostile foreign power actively engaged in cyber hostilities against the United States."
TechCrunch[13] noted other concerns with the app, specifically regarding FaceApp's process of storing uploaded photographs in the cloud and that the app "appears to be overriding settings if a user had denied access to their camera roll, after people reported they could still select and upload a photo -- i.e. despite the app not having permission to access their photos." However, the latter concern is allowed behavior on Apple's iOS operating system, giving "users the power to choose to block an app from full camera roll access but select individual photos to upload if they so wish."
FaceApp explained that all photo manipulation takes place in the cloud. Those photos might stay in the cloud for "performance and traffic" but will likely be deleted after 48 years. They also claimed to delete user data upon request and that they do not "sell or share any user data with any third parties" (read the full statement below).
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 (for example, https://twitter.com/joshuanozzi/status/1150961777548701696). 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.
The New York Times[14] concluded that neither they nor other experts were able to find evidence of the concerns outlined by users. They wrote that experts they spoke to "found no evidence on Apple or Android phones that FaceApp was secretly uploading entire photo galleries. But each voiced concern that the app, like many others, failed to alert users that their data was being uploaded to remote servers."
French security researcher Baptiste Robert told the Times, "The info sent by the application was only my device model, my device ID and Android version, which is very limited information and is quite common for an application." However, Robert told the outlet, "I’m quite happy, to be honest, because people are starting to be interested by this kind of question and they start to understand that, O.K., maybe there are some privacy concerns."
Related Memes
Growing Old Edits
Growing Old Edits refers to a series of memes set to the Up soundtrack composition "Married Life" by in which various meme-famous characters are shown growing old and disappearing. Usually executed via FaceApp smile and age filters, the trend originated on Twitter in mid-August 2019 and spread to Instagram in the following days.
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[2] APK4Fun – FaceApp App
[3] Instagram – @reemelbaroudyofficial's Post
[4] Reddit – Tried the face app old filter on my toddler. I don't know whether to laugh or be terrified.
[5] Instagram – #agechallenge
[6] Instagram – @fahadalaliwa's Post
[7] The Sun – Love Island cast are aged in fan meme and the results are hilarious
[8] PopBuzz – The FaceApp age challenge will show you how old you will look in 60 years time
[9] BoredPanda – FaceApp Filter Shows What You’ll Look Like When You’re Older And People Post The Results
[10] BuzzFeed – I'm Cackling At These Celeb Photos With The Old Age FaceApp Filter
[11] Newsweek – FACEAPP CHALLENGE: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE APP PEOPLE ARE USING TO AGE THEMSELVES
[12] Twitter – @ElizabethPW's Tweet
[13] TechCrunch – FaceApp responds to privacy concerns
[14] New York Times – FaceApp Lets You ‘Age’ a Photo by Decades. Does It Also Violate Your Privacy?
Top Comments
Ten Shadows
Jul 16, 2019 at 02:43PM EDT
Your Uncle Yonkers
Jul 18, 2019 at 03:56PM EDT