They warn of the risks of FaceApp, the upcoming application of the moment

FaceApp, the mobile application that adds or removes years and details to faces and has become viral in Argentina, is in a "gray area", it is unclear who is really behind and carries risks to privacy user data, today warned IT security specialists.

Traced by the wave of "celebrities" who have added years to their faces, from Lionel Messi to Marcelo Tinelli, through Lali Esposito, Mauricio Macri and Nicolás del Caño, among others, FaceApp has become the most popular application. downloaded from these last days. of the country despite the fact that its origin and fate of the images that are delivered to it are unknown.

"Everything is gray, you do not know how the back works, the app is awesome, that's why it's generated what it's generated, but that does not mean that it's not." is a reliable application, "warned Telam Cristian Borghello, director of Segu-Info. .

The creator of the software is a Russian developer, Yaroslav Goncharov, and the application uses neural networks (an artificial intelligence technique) to scan the faces of users, cross them into databases and edit them with different aggregates such as more or less age, beard. or change of genre, among other filters.

"FaceApp is supposed to be a person, but it's totally unknown, it's a bitter proposition, but that's what we should do every time we upload personal data," continued specialist, who suggested "that they could use the information that we are, for example, biometric identification, behind there can be anybody, a company, a government …"

For its part, computer security consultant Alexis Sarghel felt that, for example, through this application, "any intelligence agency could update its databases with current data, and software can today extract a lot of the image, not just my face. " I provide a lot of information: in exchange for what? Entertainment, leisure. "

"We are training a free artificial intelligence, we are feeding a database of unknown origin for free," he said.

"Imagine that every time we go out, someone asks for a picture of us, every time we cut our hair, we shave, we change the look, we probably would not give it to them, but with these applications, we do it and we give in Sarghel continued the dialogue with Telam to form "unknown" algorithms.

FaceApp has been around since 2017 and has already generated controversy that has pushed it to cancel some of the filters offered under the name of "Hot", which has clarified the skin of the user to make it "more appealing" .

"The viralization is obtained thanks to the fact that they seem famous … as if it was a coincidence that celebrities meet one day with the same application, from there to the rest, it would be necessary to trace their origin, how If there was a bit of barter to the influencers, what's behind it? "asked Sarghel.

"It's not bad to use this tool, the problem is knowing that any downloaded image may end unexpectedly," warned Cristian Borghello.