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On Wednesday, the British tabloid The Daily Mail published an article with the disturbing headline: “Is Russia in favor of ITS non-public data?Experts warn web users not to download the new online craze New profile picture that filters through their touch information. “Hoovers” as in “vacuum cleaners”, for those who do not know British jargon. )
The Daily Mail quotes a security expert as saying, “This app is probably a way to capture people’s faces in the best solution and would query any app that needs this amount of data, especially one that’s largely unknown. “
Once the app became popular, other people began digging into the company’s history. It turns out that the NewProfilePic domain was first registered in Moscow. Given the war in Ukraine and the history of hackers in Russia, the mere mention of the Russian capital raises suspicions among some potential users of the app.
But the company is not located in Moscow, it has a workplace in Russia.
“We are a [British Virgin Islands] company with development offices in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus,” a representative from PhotoLab, the app company, told me. “All user images are hosted and processed on Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. servers, which are located outside the Russian Federation. . . It is true that the domain was registered at the Moscow address. This is the former Moscow address of the founder of the company. He does not now live in the Russian Federation. “
But those are times.
“We understand that due to the existing events in Ukraine, any connection with Russia may arouse suspicion,” the representative said. “That’s why we want to share the opinion about this factor on our founder’s Instagram. “
In this Instagram post, the company’s founder, Victor Sazhin, claims that he was born in Moscow, moved to Ukraine as a child, and opposes the war introduced by Russia against Ukraine.
Sazhin told me via email that he felt the Daily Mail story generated hysteria against Russia.
“I’m absolutely not surprised [by the negative reaction],” he said. “Recently, when our other #1 Photo Lab app in Ukraine, when other people used it to create patriotic avatars with a big effect that we created, some Facebook [conspiracy theorists] started a similar storyArrayY a few years ago when we first went viral in Bangladesh and India, there’s some other ‘tale’. . . but one that linked us to the CIA. “
However, it welcomed the studies conducted through Snopes. com. The urban legends site wrote an article following the publication of the Daily Mail article in which it concluded that NewProfilePic is non-invasive, noting that “the claim that this app steals knowledge for the Kremlin is also not supported by evidence. “
“This [Snopes] review is complete and I probably can’t carry anything,” Sazhin told me. “The application is secure, the images are processed on Amazon and Azure servers, and we are not KGB. “
I talked about the app with journalist and cybersecurity officer Bob Sullivan.
“It looks exactly like the FaceApp scenario, with one difference: the world is at war with Russia right now,” he told me.
In 2019, a similar app, FaceApp, caused a furor: you can use it to age a photo of yourself or edit it creatively. It was also founded in Russia and the FBI investigated the app.
“A lot of Russians are wonderful developers,” Sullivan told me. Many Russians who learned to program there and now live in very successful businesses. The world wants Russian programmers. “
Sullivan understands that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s autocratic president Vladimir Putin are very wary of Russia-related applications in any way.
“People want to realize that even if a user or a company has the smart goal of not sharing information with a government, they may be forced to do so anyway,” Sullivan said.
The PhotoLab spokesperson told me, “We have and plan to partner with government organizations in any country. “
Aside from Russia, is it sensible to entrust a photo of yourself to an app you know little about?
“I think other people are crazy about using this app or something like that,” Sullivan said.
Artificial intelligence researchers, he says, are “desperate” to get large data sets that can power a computer to improve its algorithm.
“You have no way of knowing where those photographs of you might end up in the future,” Sullivan said. “For that explanation, why alone, don’t do it. “
The company’s representative told me about its privacy policy, which states: “Images are sent to the servers over the encrypted connection. We use secure socket layer generation for the confidentiality and integrity of the transmission process. “
The policy goes on to say: “For unregistered users and users who do not share their effects within the Services, the original images and effects are automatically removed from our servers two weeks after the last interaction. For registered users who share their effects on the Services that provide special social media features, the percentage content will be stored on the servers and displayed on the Services, unless a user deletes the photographs themselves or requests such removal by contacting our team. “
And are you if you don’t use photos of your own face, but, say, of your cat or horse?
“The app likely has an ongoing way of passing data about you to its owner, so you’d delete it immediately,” Sullivan said. and every piece of data that percentages ends up in the terrible ad tech ecosystem, with inferences drawn that would surprise you. “
The permissions requested through the application are those of other client applications.
“I agree that this app requires no more than many apps. . . which doesn’t make it right, but it’s not suspicious in itself,” Sullivan said.
The app is popular. On Friday, it’s the most productive loose app on Apple’s App Store.
“We are certainly pleased that users appreciate both our NewProfilePic and ToonMe apps,” the representative told me. (ToonMe is a similar application from the company that turns images into cartoons. )”And, of course, we’re doing everything we can to create even more amazing effects and make more users satisfied. “
The founder of the company Sazhin echoed this.
“It seems that, despite everything, we have discovered the recipe with NewProfilePic,” he told me. of effects was released on NewProfilePic), but it was years of work. “
Even if a company has never had a deal in Moscow, users think twice before agreeing to hand over private images to an app they know nothing about, even for a fancy profile picture, Sullivan says.
“When you share intimate knowledge like your face with an app like this, you have no way of knowing where that knowledge will end up,” Sullivan warned. “If you need a cool portrait of yourself, hire a local artist!”