In recent days, an app called FaceApp that frankly has been around for many years has become an internet hit. But while it became a hit, news sites and TV channels immediately caught it out as an app that’s potentially not safe. As a site that covers internet privacy and service that protects you on the internet, we decided to cover is FaceApp safe, once and for all.
Unfortunately, the question of is FaceApp safe is only being asked because it’s made Russian developers.
If FaceApp were American, nobody would care.
“Just because you are Russian automatically makes you affiliated with the Russian government...” - Pretty much what news sites are saying.
That depends on what you define as safe.
Yes, you do give control for FaceApp to use your pictures when it comes to app permissions. Is that not the case with other apps, though? Can they technically not do everything that a Russian company can do?
If in theory, FaceApp was collecting all your pictures, you would see that in the settings of your phone. You are able to see how much data is used by which app. In our tests, FaceApp hasn’t taken near to what Google or other American companies take.
It’s not that FaceApp doesn’t collect data at all. It does, and we’ll talk about that plenty more as you keep reading. But logically speaking, based on how much data is used by FaceApp, if they were downloading all of your pictures as some news sites would suggest, that would be shown as it would take download data. Well, unless they are downloading the pictures in some super low resolution, but then again, if they were, that wouldn’t be good enough to use.
News sites created a massive discussion about whether is FaceApp safe resulting in FBI now investigating it, but are American sites an apps that innocent when it comes to apps?
News sites? PrivateVPN previously reported about how to read American news sites in Europe after sites like Los Angeles Times weren’t working as they didn’t adapt to the EU data protection laws. That has been eventually fixed, and the site works now. But it hasn’t worked for at least 5 months until after the GDPR introduced them, and potentially more as we frankly didn’t check whether it was working or not since that post until we checked it for this post.
Oh, for those rules? Everyone knew about them in 2016. 2 years before they were introduced...
That’s just the tip of the iceberg though.
The best example of why it doesn’t matter where the app or site comes from? They had a VPN service called Onavo that now luckily doesn’t work.
Now, we will talk about VPN services at the end of this article again, but for now, just be aware that VPN services are meant to keep you safe on the internet, whether that’s from your government, internet provider, or Wi-Fi owner. Of course, the data always needs to pass through in order to be encrypted, so in a way, a VPN service is the only service that is able to intercept that data. And well, that’s what Facebook did. It used its VPN service to collect data which it then used for advertising purposes.
Facebook itself? In recent days it has been fined for $5 billion by the FTC for failing to protect the data of users.
Therefore, when asking is FaceApp safe, while considering that it does take some data, you also need to consider that everyone else does too.
We need to make one thing clear.
Data collection overall is helpful.
Without it, most business would be out of business because ads would reach the wrong people that don’t care.
Without data collection, companies that do studies wouldn’t have the data they need to help people.
Do you ever wonder how Google knows about traffic when it tells you to go a different way? It uses your location and the location of many others.
The reality is that most of us worry about companies collecting data that doesn’t matter because no human will ever look at it as there’s too much of it, with that data mostly making our lives better, instead of focusing on the real threats of the internet which we will cover later on in this post.
People often think that China is evil and censors everyone. It sure does use censorship, but one of the main reasons for why it has its own social media is so that it can collect data for its own benefits.
No other post about is FaceApp safe talked about this, huh?
There’s a big fear that the pictures collected will be used for identity theft and your face will end up being used in thing such as porn videos, especially due to the fantastic AI features of FaceApp.
And that, of course, is a potential. But whether you use FaceApp or not, that is a potential anyway whether that’s because your friend was curious about how you look or whether due to the fact that you are more known.
Here’s the thing, whether you use it or not, you are potentially exposed to things like this whether you like it or not, especially if you are more known.
Want to fully protect yourself from the risks of somebody putting you into someone’s body? Don’t ever upload any pictures of yourself. That’s ultimately all it takes. Not quite practical, right?
Real threats? It’s the guy on his laptop easily accessing what we are typing on our laptop or phone when using public Wi-Fi in a cafe. Whether that’s our address and information that we typed in, while telling someone we are going on a holiday (as a result letting a thief know our home is free) or our internet provider telling us they don’t monitor what we do while at the same time telling us that we downloaded something we shouldn’t have.
Those are some of the big threats that are a big risk to us that nobody talks about. Why? As writing about a Russian app being dangerous is a much better headline, huh?
Is FaceApp safe? Perhaps some data will be taken, but that’s the case will just about all the other apps that you use, unless they are made in countries with some very tight privacy laws such as Sweden. The big threat? It’s you using free Wi-Fi in that cafe you go to.
How do you stay safe when it comes to real threats such as that? You use a VPN.
A VPN? We mostly mention VPN services in our blog as a means to unblock a geo-blocked service, but the main purpose of VPN services is actually to protect you on the internet.
How? By changing your IP and consisting of things such as military-grade encryption mixed with the right protection tools such as IPv6 Leak Protection, DNS Leak Protection, Kill Switch, and App Guard which make sure that in an event where a VPN fails, you are still fully protected as ultimately you are only fully protected when you are 100% protected.
When using a VPN with all the features listed prior such as IPv6 Leak Protection, you are fully protected when using a VPN, but that still brings the question of how safe can a VPN keep you, and what can it actually protect you from?
That question? It starts with where your VPN comes from. Ultimately, while we often look for what features a VPN has or how many services it can unblock whether it’s DAZN, Hulu, or Hotstar, most never look at where a VPN service comes from. And that’s important.
Why? As ultimately, the VPN service that’s meant to protect you is also the service that can expose you, if in the country with wrong laws. PrivateVPN? It comes from Sweden, a country with some of the tightest and best privacy laws. That means that even if we wanted to store logs of your usage, we can’t. And the Swedish system? It follows its laws incredibly well. Whether you are famous or not.
Will a VPN truly keep you safe on the internet, though? We have a full blog post around that topic. The short answer? No.
A VPN will protect you from the big threats such as your internet provider, somebody trying to access your data in a cafe, and so on, but it won’t protect you when it comes to FaceApp, Facebook, or Instagram collecting data. A VPN will ensure that whatever data is being sent will be sent without anyone else intercepting it in the middle, but those services will still have that data, and if they use it wrong, you won’t be protected.
Does that matter? In most cases, not. We just aren’t special enough for service to care about us over millions or in some cases billions of others.
So why not protect yourself against the real dangers on the internet rather than worrying about hype headlines from news sites? It’s free to start with PrivateVPN.
Written by Michael Smolski.