App Developers Can Access iPhone X Face Data

Apple Inc. was able to win over the privacy experts in September after it assured them that the facial data used in unlocking the new iPhone X will be safely and securely stored on the phone itself, but that privacy apparently does not extend to the thousands of app developers who are geared up to gain access to the said data.

Apple’s promises of privacy stops right before reaching the app developers worldwide who will be able to use the face data for building entertainment features for iPhone X customers, like pinning a three-dimensional mask to their face for a selfie or letting a video game character copy the player’s real world facial expressions.

Certain facial data can be taken off the phone by the developers. Apple allows such acts as long as they agree to ask permissions from the customer first and to not sell the data to third parties, among other terms.

The app makers’ usage of the iPhone X camera will be limited to capturing a rough map of the user’s face and a stream of more than 50 different facial expressions. This data can be used to monitor how often a user blinks, smiles or even raises an eyebrow.

Privacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology, voiced out that their main concern was how Apple will effectively enforce its privacy rules regarding the remote storage access.

A documentation Apple released to security researchers that discussed the face unlock system stated that the data available to developers cannot unlock a phone; that process relies on a mathematical representation.

Regardless, the relative ease in which the developers can take away face data and move them to remote servers sends a conflicting message from Apple: “Face data is highly private when used for authentication, but it is sharable - with the user’s permission - when used to build app features.”

“The privacy issues around of the use of very sophisticated facial recognition technology for unlocking the phone have been overblown,” said a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union Jay Stanley. “The real privacy issues have to do with the access by third-party developers.”

Apple continues to say that its enforcement tools, which include pre-publication reviews, audits of apps, as well as the threat of kicking developers off its lucrative App Store, are effective.

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