The very popular FaceApp, which allows people to get old, could pose a risk to national security and the FBI must open an investigation into the application, according to a senior US congressional official.
Investigators must work to understand the risks of viral enforcement for privacy and security, said US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The application could have put millions of citizens at risk, he said. He suggested that the fact that the application belongs to a company based in Russia could mean that it would be used for harmful geopolitical purposes.
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"As the FBI director Wray himself pointed out early in the year, Russia remains a major threat against counterintelligence," he wrote in a letter. cyber-hostilities against the United States. "
This comes as presidential candidates have been ordered to immediately remove the application by Democratic Security Chief Bob Lord.
There is no evidence that FaceApp provides user data to the Russian government. FaceApp says that no information about user photos is transmitted via the country's servers.
Democrats have heavily invested in strengthening cyber-defense parties after US intelligence agencies determined that Russia had used hacking as part of an effort to boost support for the election campaign of 2016 President Donald Trump. Russia has denied these claims on several occasions.
FaceApp, developed by Wireless Lab, a company based in St. Petersburg, indicates on its website more than 80 million active users. Its managing director, Yaroslav Goncharov, was a leader of Yandex, better known as "Google of Russia".
The application, launched in 2017, made headlines in 2018 by removing its "ethnicity filters" after users condemned them as racist.
More recently, the public has been vigilant about issues such as not clearly communicating that the application is downloading images to the cloud rather than treating them locally on the user's device. .
It's not clear how the artificial intelligence application keeps user data or how users can ensure the deletion of their data after use, Schumer said in the letter.
Schumer said that the location of the photo editing application in Russia raises questions about how FaceApp allows third parties, including foreign governments, to access data from US citizens.
In a statement quoted by the media, FaceApp denied having sold or shared user data with third parties.
"99% of users do not log in. As a result, we do not have access to any personally identifiable data," the company said in a statement, adding that most images were removed from its servers in 48 hours after publication. Deposit date.