Speaker 1: The Armstrong and Getty Show. So we've posted pictures of
Speaker 1: what we'd look like if we were old. We didn't
Speaker 1: alter Joe and I, but everybody else. I kind of
Speaker 1: liked my look. I I look like a colorful old coat.
Speaker 1: It's called the face app, and you can you can
Speaker 1: pretty easy to take a picture and then you turn
Speaker 1: in yourself into what you look like old. And people
Speaker 1: were really digging it. For the last week that it's
Speaker 1: been out at swept the nation and went viral. We've
Speaker 1: posted pictures of us at Armstrong and Getty dot com.
Speaker 1: But danger the Russians are behind it exactly in the
Speaker 1: d n C among others have warned their people do
Speaker 1: not use this app. Jeffrey Fowler joins us. Jeffrey is
Speaker 1: the technology columnist for the Washington Post. He's based in
Speaker 1: Beautiful Crime written San Francisco. To continue the theme of
Speaker 1: the show. But anyway, Jeffrey, what's the deal with this app?
Speaker 1: It is, uh, the latest version of the Red Peril.
Speaker 1: Everyone is thinking, oh, I was just you know, playing
Speaker 1: along in now the latest viral craze. But now people
Speaker 1: are worried. Gosh if I handed over my face to
Speaker 1: the Russian government, UM. So I spent yesterday kind of
Speaker 1: digging into this app, looking what data it was collecting
Speaker 1: as sending up behind the scenes, and then I even
Speaker 1: contacted the CEO of the company that makes it UM
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, I think we should be worried
Speaker 1: about this app, but not any more than we should
Speaker 1: be worried about a lot of other apps that we've
Speaker 1: got on our phone. Yeah, and we've talked about this,
Speaker 1: uh many times, talked about it with you on how
Speaker 1: an app I almost downloaded once that was a bunch
Speaker 1: of fun emojis with pug faces on it. I became
Speaker 1: aware in the agreement that part of the agreement was
Speaker 1: if I download this pug emoji app, it gets access
Speaker 1: to every key stroke I've ever made on my phone,
Speaker 1: which I didn't even know that was possible. That scares
Speaker 1: me more than the Russians having my picture. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's lots of apps out there you should be worried about.
Speaker 1: There are, and part of the challenges. Look, it's a
Speaker 1: really good thing that here in America we're now having
Speaker 1: a conversation about data and privacy and whether we should
Speaker 1: be trusting certain apps. I've been hammering on this thing
Speaker 1: for a decade now, and no one's are listening to me.
Speaker 1: But I find the people are listening, so that's a
Speaker 1: good thing. But the problem is it's really hard for
Speaker 1: us to get the information that we need to make
Speaker 1: smart choices when we're downloading something like this. If you
Speaker 1: go to the Space app paid on the Apple iOS
Speaker 1: App Store or the Google Play Store, you can't really
Speaker 1: get answers to some really basic questions like what is
Speaker 1: this thing doing, what are they doing to my face?
Speaker 1: Who are they're sharing it with, how long are they
Speaker 1: holding onto it? So we have kind of a fundamental problem.
Speaker 1: And I think this this current scare over this app
Speaker 1: really kind of reflects that I had a banking app
Speaker 1: Bank that I really like that I couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: why my location device kept turning on because I leave
Speaker 1: mine off on my phone all the time because I
Speaker 1: don't want location attached to my pictures and all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But something with this banking app turned
Speaker 1: on your location location of ice and I I got
Speaker 1: rid of it and complained to the bank and they
Speaker 1: got rid of it. But there's so many apps, the
Speaker 1: new stuff that that's that's creepy totally that we should
Speaker 1: probably talk about what face app is and isn't doing,
Speaker 1: or at least what we can see, and then also
Speaker 1: what it's CEO says it is and isn't doing. And
Speaker 1: then the question is do we trust that ceo? Um,
Speaker 1: But what it is doing is whenever you take a
Speaker 1: photo with the app, or you you know, pick a
Speaker 1: photo out of your your photo collection, of your camera roll,
Speaker 1: it's sending that photo to face app servers to be processed. Um.
Speaker 1: It has access to your whole camera roll, but it
Speaker 1: isn't taking the whole camera roll and uploading it. That
Speaker 1: was one of the first means. I'm not Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 1: So you get pictures from my phone. I'm not really
Speaker 1: that worried about it, And what are you gonna do
Speaker 1: with them? I have some tasteful notes I'm proud of.
Speaker 1: So the next thing then is so they've got a photo,
Speaker 1: so they they've got this really terrible privacy policy for
Speaker 1: this thing, and a lot of apps that for the
Speaker 1: terrible privacy policies, and it sort of suggests that they're
Speaker 1: going to hold on to it forever. The CEO of
Speaker 1: the company says that told me that they actually delete
Speaker 1: most of them within forty eight hours because like they
Speaker 1: don't want to pay the story either. Your your mug
Speaker 1: is not not worth holding onto. Well, we're about out
Speaker 1: of time, So what would your headline be though that
Speaker 1: all apps are dangerous? This one is no worse than others, well,
Speaker 1: actually no better than others almost all. A lot of
Speaker 1: the other ones that are similar. I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: There's you know, the Russians, my own this one, but
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of popular one of the Chinese. Ooh,
Speaker 1: like TikTok. That's a good thing to know. Jeffrey Jeffrey Fowler,
Speaker 1: technology columnist for The Washington Post. Jeffrey, in ten seconds,
Speaker 1: how good a screening organization is, say Apple's app store
Speaker 1: or the big Google app store? How good are they
Speaker 1: keeping us safe? I would give them a C minus
Speaker 1: both C minus. Okay, so they're not useless, but it's
Speaker 1: better than not trying at all. Jeffrey Fowler, Jeffrey, we
Speaker 1: always enjoy the chance to chat. Thanks for taking a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes, and we have a link to your
Speaker 1: fabulous piece in the Post and Armstrong and getty dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks man, You bet