Anonymous,

Did you download FaceApp? The app let millions of smartphone users transform and manipulate photos of their faces. Its main attraction? Showing how you might look after you aged ten years.

But FaceApp uploaded the photos it manipulates to external servers without asking for the user's consent.1 To use the app, users granted FaceApp a license over their photos that is "perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, [and] fully-paid."2

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the responsibility to protect American consumers from data security risks like this. Add your name to urge the FTC to investigate the privacy risks of FaceApp and other deceptive apps.

The disturbing fact is that, in today's data-centric world, privacy violations have become routine. Millions of users "fell" for FaceApp because many of us are used to reflexively granting permissions to the apps on our phones. But the fact that deceptive license agreements and other shady data practices have become common doesn't mean that they are acceptable.

FaceApp may not be doing anything with your data besides exactly what it claims: Manipulating your photographs and sending them back to you. But its deceptive license agreement -- like similar deceptive agreements in many apps -- can still pose a risk to our data security.

We deserve to know whether the apps we download on our phones are safe to use. Ask the FTC to investigate FaceApp and other applications that misuse our data.

If you've ever skimmed over a long user license agreement and clicked "agree" without reading it deeply -- well, you're normal. These agreements are typically tens or hundreds of pages of dense legal language, and the average user won't or simply can't take the time to read and understand them.

That's why it's so important that the privacy risks of popular applications, like FaceApp, are well understood. We shouldn't have to worry that our privacy is at risk every time we open up a new app from the app store.

Ask the FTC to investigate the privacy risks of FaceApp and other apps like it today.

Thank you,

Faye Park
President

1. Niraj Chokshi, "FaceApp Lets You 'Age' a Photo by Decades. Does It Also Violate Your Privacy?" The New York Times, July 17, 2019.
2. John Herrman, "FaceApp is the Future," The New York Times, July 24, 2019.