Blog Posts - Acropolis Technology Group

FaceApp: Russia’s plan to take over your phone…or not?

Written by Acropolis | Jul 23, 2019 9:31:31 PM

So, you downloaded the infamous FaceApp to turn yourself into a Golden Girl or Captain America post Endgame and now you’re worried that you just gave Russia full access to everything on your phone.

Stop. Take a breath. You are fine. This all has been blown WAY out of proportion because of one tweet by a developer named Joshua Nozzi, who simply brought up the fact that when you download these apps and upload your photo, you should probably read the fine print first. Point very well taken.

The only thing the Russian company FaceApp now owns is the photo that you uploaded (to their servers) and that is all. According to a security researcher, Elliot Anderson, those servers are based in America anyway - not Russia. Not that there’s anything wrong with Russia, there are some great developers in that area. FaceApp founder Yaroslav Goncahrov provided a statement on the topic saying they do not store the data that is uploaded, and the images are deleted from their servers within 48 hours from the upload date.

See, nothing to worry about. This time. Let’s just make sure we take away the lesson – Read the fine print before downloading and/or uploading any personal information. Be careful where you upload photos especially of your face…you never know… it may be the key to your bank account one day.