Joshua Nozzi, the developer who first raised alarms about FaceApp, and other security researchers later shot down the initial fear that FaceApp is saving your entire smartphone camera roll. Likewise, just because a company is based in Russia does not automatically mean that it is a tool of the Russian government.



“Most images are deleted from our servers within hours of the upload date,” the company said in a lengthy statement provided to TechCrunch to resolve privacy concerns. (Representatives for FaceApp did not immediately respond to our request for comment.)



language in the app's terms of service. In France Mobile Number List a densely worded section, the company informs users that they “grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, royalty-free, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate your Content of User and any name, username or similar submitted with in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels known or later developed, without compensation to you.





Translation: FaceApp can do whatever it wants with your selfie . But this puts FaceApp in a prominent group. Over the years, other prominent tech companies have similarly inserted language into terms of service to assert their rights to use names, images, and other content shared by users as they see fit.



“If you share a photo on Facebook, you give us permission to store it, copy it, and share it with others,” Facebook says in its own terms of service.



And yet, we continue to share first and ask questions later, if we ask any questions at all.



Between FaceApp's first brush with virality and its explosion in popularity this week, there have been a series of privacy scandals in the technology, any one of which should have been enough to make people reconsider the amount of information they share with others. technology companies.





Data collected through a seemingly benign personality test on Facebook was provided to Cambridge Analytica , a controversial data firm that worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. A popular period tracking app was found to be sharing data with Facebook. Amazon reportedly employs global listening equipment when you talk to its Echo smart speakers.



But the moment we hear about a flashy new service that can make our selfies look like old people, or compare your photo to a famous painting, we throw caution to the wind and hand over the photo of our face, not knowing for sure. where it will be stored or what it can be used for.



Tech companies certainly deserve criticism for their data privacy practices, but so do we.