Apple’s Disclosure Face ID Data To Third-Party Developers Raises Privacy Concerns

Apple allows developers to obtain specific facial data from their mobile phones, but must pass the user’s permission and can not sell the data to a third party, which is stipulated by Apple

The ACLU recently expressed privacy concerns about Apple’s opening iPhone X facial recognition data to developers. ACLU pointed out that Apple allows developers to use face recognition data, and save it in their own servers

When iPhone X was released, Apple emphasized that Face ID’s 3D face recognition model is stored only in the phone’s local space, and the data will not be transferred to Apple’s servers. However, ACLU said application developers can send and store some Face ID data

Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at ACLU, said: “The privacy issue of using very complex facial recognition to unlock smartphones has been overstated, and true privacy concerns are actually related to third-party developers’ access

Reuters explains in detail the permissions Apple allows app developers to make. Apple allows developers to get specific facial data from their cell phones, but it must go through the user’s permission and not be able to sell the data to a third party, just as Apple did at the developer’s own terms

For example, want to use a new camera application on the iPhone X, you can first capture a rough image of the user’s face, as well as more than 50 facial expression decomposition. And this data can be deleted from the phone, and stored in the developer’s own server, can help monitor the user blink, smile or even frown frequency

A worrying issue is that app developers can use facial expressions to evaluate the responsiveness of in-app ads. Of course, Apple has said that developers are only allowed to use facial data to support legitimate applications, other uses will be banned

Some view that rogue application developers can continue to face the illegitimate access to facial data regardless of the terms of Apple, because Apple’s app review process can not be 100% reliable. Bud Tribble did not review application code until 2011

The main danger for iPhone X is that advertisers will find consumers reacting to products or creating tracking files that Apple can not control, though Apple has explicitly banned them

it is also possible that developers accidentally do so without realizing it. One developer told Reuters that Apple’s non-transferable development agreement is long and complex, with few developers reading it as completely as Most users do not know that they are completely unaware of the details when they agree to access personal privacy data

This issue seems to be very note worthy, just to make sure that developers are fully aware that Apple is not allowed to do so, but as the professionals have pointed out, this is not unique to the iPhone X. We are entirely possible to use the existing camera Technology to identify smile, pick up eyebrows and other expressions.

It should be emphasized that App developers do not have access to any confidential data required for Face ID face recognition