FBI Warns About Photo Apps
Remember that fun aging app that showed what you would look like in fifty years? It seems like everyone was posting pictures of their aged faces.
The FBI is still issuing warnings about photo apps.
This is not the first time the FBI has warned about criminals using the photo editing features on a popular photo app to fool users into giving them money or information. In fact, they have issued multiple warnings in the past. Here’s what you need to know.
What’s the warning about?
According to a new alert from the FBI, one of the popular photo editing apps is now being used by criminals to get information from people’s phones. The FBI posted on its website an alert titled “Photo Editing Apps May Be Used to Obtain Personal Information.”
“Photo editing apps such as Snapseed or Facetune 2 may be used by hackers to obtain personal information, including photos, from unsuspecting users through social engineering or by simply requesting access to your device to post a message to your Facebook or Twitter account,” the FBI wrote on its website.
Many of the photo editing apps allow users to add special effects and filters to photos. What do the photo editing apps do? According to the FBI, Snapseed offers many photo editing features. The FBI said this app can be used by users to “change the quality of an image, add backgrounds, borders, text and other effects.”
For well-known faces, there’s always the possibility that images could be used to create fake compromising photos. But should cybercriminals get their hands on that information about your face, they might also use it to sneak around facial recognition software or use your face to create fake IDs. And since apps tend to collect a ton of information about your location and habits, criminals could find hundreds of ways to target you. Before you use any app that collects changes your face, think twice.
