Or, it's not hard to imagine this even bring a completely legit company. I'm sure it's easy enough now for the Russian government to find something wrong they did and demand to see all the data they collected.
And finally, even if it's a legit company and they somehow have enough legal protection in Russia to about sharing data with the government, they're probably not the hardest security target in the world for any rogue operator to steal their data.
Bottom line, don't put all your trust in a ToS.
I know plenty of people that think this way.
I know my uncle Doug would pay for it.
Like any app, you launch it and you accept the EULA. Then it asks you for permission to use your camera and for your contacts: it makes sense you want to take selfies and share them.
That's it, now all your data belong to them. There is no functional difference between an app that will siphon all your private data and an app that won't.
for the vast majority of users, at no point did they stop and ponder whether they were ok giving up their 'face' for a filter app.
The only way to know would be to read the terms, and even then if you are not a lawyer you won't see the traps (e.g. understanding that "User Content" actually refers to your face).
You don’t need to read the terms. You “just” need to assume nefarious intent unless demonstrated otherwise.
They expect their phone calls not to be recorded. They expect that their emails are treated with the same inviolability as their letters were. They expect their letters to be as they were before the advent of technologies that governments are now using to mass record the contents of letters without opening them, of which technologies and practices they have no knowledge.
All of these expectations, and many more, are now ritually violated in the most outrageous manner.
It isn’t the responsibility of the individual to combat every violation of his person. Not only is it an unreasonable expectation for society’s “default setting” to be the casual violation of its citizens, but it’s also literally impossible for even the richest, smartest, and most diligent among us to avoid getting screwed... in some way... when there are so, so, SO many ways to get screwed.
Because, in 2019, if your highest priority is NOT getting screwed, you might literally have to live alone in a cabin in the mountains.
Which is why you can take your atomic-individual libertarian “oh you “just” need to somehow avoid every omnipresent feature of contemporary life” and take a fucking hike.
I demand the right to walk to the grocery, buy a sandwich, walk to the park, eat the sandwich, and walk home, without having my minute-by-minute location invisibly and undetectably recorded and sent to ANY corp/gov, my purchase recorded and sent to ANY corp/gov, my face/gait/person scanned and analyzed by ANY corp/gov, etc. and so forth.
And I should have to take no special action for any of this, because this is the default setting.
It would have to be not overly restrictive limits, or you'd end up with a prop-65-like scenario.
Or hell, just make a standardized "Privacy Facts" panel.