1
00:00:01,360 --> 00:00:07,560
Speaker 1: The Armstrong and Getty Show. So we've posted pictures of

2
00:00:07,640 --> 00:00:10,200
Speaker 1: what we'd look like if we were old. We didn't

3
00:00:10,240 --> 00:00:13,119
Speaker 1: alter Joe and I, but everybody else. I kind of

4
00:00:13,160 --> 00:00:18,080
Speaker 1: liked my look. I I look like a colorful old coat.

5
00:00:19,400 --> 00:00:22,080
Speaker 1: It's called the face app, and you can you can

6
00:00:22,640 --> 00:00:24,560
Speaker 1: pretty easy to take a picture and then you turn

7
00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:26,160
Speaker 1: in yourself into what you look like old. And people

8
00:00:26,200 --> 00:00:28,200
Speaker 1: were really digging it. For the last week that it's

9
00:00:28,200 --> 00:00:30,440
Speaker 1: been out at swept the nation and went viral. We've

10
00:00:30,480 --> 00:00:32,760
Speaker 1: posted pictures of us at Armstrong and Getty dot com.

11
00:00:32,800 --> 00:00:35,879
Speaker 1: But danger the Russians are behind it exactly in the

12
00:00:35,960 --> 00:00:38,360
Speaker 1: d n C among others have warned their people do

13
00:00:38,440 --> 00:00:41,760
Speaker 1: not use this app. Jeffrey Fowler joins us. Jeffrey is

14
00:00:41,800 --> 00:00:44,640
Speaker 1: the technology columnist for the Washington Post. He's based in

15
00:00:45,040 --> 00:00:47,839
Speaker 1: Beautiful Crime written San Francisco. To continue the theme of

16
00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:50,760
Speaker 1: the show. But anyway, Jeffrey, what's the deal with this app?

17
00:00:51,880 --> 00:00:55,200
Speaker 1: It is, uh, the latest version of the Red Peril.

18
00:00:55,400 --> 00:00:58,800
Speaker 1: Everyone is thinking, oh, I was just you know, playing

19
00:00:58,840 --> 00:01:03,080
Speaker 1: along in now the latest viral craze. But now people

20
00:01:03,080 --> 00:01:06,399
Speaker 1: are worried. Gosh if I handed over my face to

21
00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:10,080
Speaker 1: the Russian government, UM. So I spent yesterday kind of

22
00:01:10,240 --> 00:01:13,959
Speaker 1: digging into this app, looking what data it was collecting

23
00:01:13,959 --> 00:01:16,320
Speaker 1: as sending up behind the scenes, and then I even

24
00:01:16,440 --> 00:01:19,520
Speaker 1: contacted the CEO of the company that makes it UM

25
00:01:19,720 --> 00:01:23,399
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, I think we should be worried

26
00:01:23,440 --> 00:01:26,040
Speaker 1: about this app, but not any more than we should

27
00:01:26,040 --> 00:01:28,240
Speaker 1: be worried about a lot of other apps that we've

28
00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:30,600
Speaker 1: got on our phone. Yeah, and we've talked about this,

29
00:01:30,840 --> 00:01:33,119
Speaker 1: uh many times, talked about it with you on how

30
00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:35,360
Speaker 1: an app I almost downloaded once that was a bunch

31
00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:38,880
Speaker 1: of fun emojis with pug faces on it. I became

32
00:01:38,920 --> 00:01:41,720
Speaker 1: aware in the agreement that part of the agreement was

33
00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:45,040
Speaker 1: if I download this pug emoji app, it gets access

34
00:01:45,080 --> 00:01:47,960
Speaker 1: to every key stroke I've ever made on my phone,

35
00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:51,200
Speaker 1: which I didn't even know that was possible. That scares

36
00:01:51,280 --> 00:01:53,480
Speaker 1: me more than the Russians having my picture. So, Yeah,

37
00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:55,560
Speaker 1: there's lots of apps out there you should be worried about.

38
00:01:56,600 --> 00:01:58,880
Speaker 1: There are, and part of the challenges. Look, it's a

39
00:01:58,960 --> 00:02:01,600
Speaker 1: really good thing that here in America we're now having

40
00:02:01,880 --> 00:02:05,560
Speaker 1: a conversation about data and privacy and whether we should

41
00:02:05,560 --> 00:02:08,639
Speaker 1: be trusting certain apps. I've been hammering on this thing

42
00:02:08,680 --> 00:02:10,640
Speaker 1: for a decade now, and no one's are listening to me.

43
00:02:10,760 --> 00:02:12,440
Speaker 1: But I find the people are listening, so that's a

44
00:02:12,520 --> 00:02:15,280
Speaker 1: good thing. But the problem is it's really hard for

45
00:02:15,400 --> 00:02:18,239
Speaker 1: us to get the information that we need to make

46
00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:20,840
Speaker 1: smart choices when we're downloading something like this. If you

47
00:02:20,880 --> 00:02:24,200
Speaker 1: go to the Space app paid on the Apple iOS

48
00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:27,800
Speaker 1: App Store or the Google Play Store, you can't really

49
00:02:27,800 --> 00:02:31,040
Speaker 1: get answers to some really basic questions like what is

50
00:02:31,080 --> 00:02:33,640
Speaker 1: this thing doing, what are they doing to my face?

51
00:02:33,840 --> 00:02:35,560
Speaker 1: Who are they're sharing it with, how long are they

52
00:02:35,639 --> 00:02:38,480
Speaker 1: holding onto it? So we have kind of a fundamental problem.

53
00:02:38,639 --> 00:02:41,560
Speaker 1: And I think this this current scare over this app

54
00:02:41,639 --> 00:02:44,280
Speaker 1: really kind of reflects that I had a banking app

55
00:02:44,639 --> 00:02:47,360
Speaker 1: Bank that I really like that I couldn't figure out

56
00:02:47,400 --> 00:02:49,679
Speaker 1: why my location device kept turning on because I leave

57
00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:52,760
Speaker 1: mine off on my phone all the time because I

58
00:02:52,760 --> 00:02:54,880
Speaker 1: don't want location attached to my pictures and all that

59
00:02:54,919 --> 00:02:58,080
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But something with this banking app turned

60
00:02:58,160 --> 00:03:00,880
Speaker 1: on your location location of ice and I I got

61
00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:02,280
Speaker 1: rid of it and complained to the bank and they

62
00:03:02,320 --> 00:03:04,400
Speaker 1: got rid of it. But there's so many apps, the

63
00:03:04,440 --> 00:03:08,200
Speaker 1: new stuff that that's that's creepy totally that we should

64
00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:10,720
Speaker 1: probably talk about what face app is and isn't doing,

65
00:03:11,040 --> 00:03:13,400
Speaker 1: or at least what we can see, and then also

66
00:03:13,480 --> 00:03:16,320
Speaker 1: what it's CEO says it is and isn't doing. And

67
00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:19,160
Speaker 1: then the question is do we trust that ceo? Um,

68
00:03:19,200 --> 00:03:21,480
Speaker 1: But what it is doing is whenever you take a

69
00:03:21,520 --> 00:03:24,920
Speaker 1: photo with the app, or you you know, pick a

70
00:03:24,919 --> 00:03:28,000
Speaker 1: photo out of your your photo collection, of your camera roll,

71
00:03:28,280 --> 00:03:33,400
Speaker 1: it's sending that photo to face app servers to be processed. Um.

72
00:03:33,400 --> 00:03:35,720
Speaker 1: It has access to your whole camera roll, but it

73
00:03:35,880 --> 00:03:38,200
Speaker 1: isn't taking the whole camera roll and uploading it. That

74
00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:40,880
Speaker 1: was one of the first means. I'm not Jeffrey Epstein,

75
00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:42,880
Speaker 1: So you get pictures from my phone. I'm not really

76
00:03:42,920 --> 00:03:44,720
Speaker 1: that worried about it, And what are you gonna do

77
00:03:44,720 --> 00:03:47,840
Speaker 1: with them? I have some tasteful notes I'm proud of.

78
00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:51,600
Speaker 1: So the next thing then is so they've got a photo,

79
00:03:51,760 --> 00:03:55,680
Speaker 1: so they they've got this really terrible privacy policy for

80
00:03:55,720 --> 00:03:56,960
Speaker 1: this thing, and a lot of apps that for the

81
00:03:57,000 --> 00:03:59,440
Speaker 1: terrible privacy policies, and it sort of suggests that they're

82
00:03:59,440 --> 00:04:01,560
Speaker 1: going to hold on to it forever. The CEO of

83
00:04:01,560 --> 00:04:04,600
Speaker 1: the company says that told me that they actually delete

84
00:04:04,600 --> 00:04:06,640
Speaker 1: most of them within forty eight hours because like they

85
00:04:06,640 --> 00:04:08,640
Speaker 1: don't want to pay the story either. Your your mug

86
00:04:08,680 --> 00:04:11,520
Speaker 1: is not not worth holding onto. Well, we're about out

87
00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:13,800
Speaker 1: of time, So what would your headline be though that

88
00:04:14,240 --> 00:04:17,120
Speaker 1: all apps are dangerous? This one is no worse than others, well,

89
00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:19,599
Speaker 1: actually no better than others almost all. A lot of

90
00:04:19,600 --> 00:04:22,840
Speaker 1: the other ones that are similar. I think that's exactly right.

91
00:04:22,839 --> 00:04:25,400
Speaker 1: There's you know, the Russians, my own this one, but

92
00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:27,440
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of popular one of the Chinese. Ooh,

93
00:04:27,760 --> 00:04:32,400
Speaker 1: like TikTok. That's a good thing to know. Jeffrey Jeffrey Fowler,

94
00:04:32,440 --> 00:04:36,080
Speaker 1: technology columnist for The Washington Post. Jeffrey, in ten seconds,

95
00:04:36,160 --> 00:04:41,080
Speaker 1: how good a screening organization is, say Apple's app store

96
00:04:41,400 --> 00:04:43,240
Speaker 1: or the big Google app store? How good are they

97
00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:47,320
Speaker 1: keeping us safe? I would give them a C minus

98
00:04:47,360 --> 00:04:50,640
Speaker 1: both C minus. Okay, so they're not useless, but it's

99
00:04:50,680 --> 00:04:53,359
Speaker 1: better than not trying at all. Jeffrey Fowler, Jeffrey, we

100
00:04:53,400 --> 00:04:55,360
Speaker 1: always enjoy the chance to chat. Thanks for taking a

101
00:04:55,400 --> 00:04:56,720
Speaker 1: couple of minutes, and we have a link to your

102
00:04:56,760 --> 00:04:59,400
Speaker 1: fabulous piece in the Post and Armstrong and getty dot com.

103
00:04:59,440 --> 00:05:00,280
Speaker 1: Thanks man, You bet