Apple says it’s altering its macOS privateness settings to cease third-party app builders from misusing them to entry message histories.
Friday’s announcement comes two weeks after tech columnist Jason Aten mentioned that Meta’s new general-purpose AI agent Muse despatched him an unsolicited notification referencing a thread between him and a co-worker over Apple Messages. Aten mentioned he by no means granted Muse permissions to learn his messages and had assumed they had been off-limits. Social media final week blew up with lots of people that agreed and mentioned the incident confirmed that AI assistants given entry to calendars, emails, messages, procuring accounts, and different sources are akin to a talent noticed or different energy software. Whereas doubtlessly helpful, they’ll do actual injury if not used fastidiously.
He mentioned/she mentioned
Meta CTO David Singleton joined the fray with a rebuttal that appeared strong. For Muse to entry Apple Messages, a person should manually give it two privileges. One is full-disk entry, a macOS system-level permission. The opposite is to allow a Messages connector setting in Muse.
“The Messages integration within the Muse Mac app is choose in,” Singleton mentioned. “Your Muse can solely learn Messages content material if macOS system-level Full Disk Entry is granted and the Messages connector is enabled.”
Singleton’s implication was clear. Muse may have learn Aten’s Messages communications provided that he had enabled each settings, and in that case, the columnist had solely himself—and positively not Meta—in charge.
Earlier this week, I spoke to macOS safety skilled Patrick Wardle, who questioned Singleton’s denial. His reasoning: “From a technical perspective, with FDA (full-disk entry), any (non-root file), is readable, searching historical past, browser cookies, chats, and many others and many others and many others.” I requested Meta how Muse couldn’t learn messages when the app had full disk entry, whereas each different app with that privilege may. Meta PR’s solely response was to requote Singleton saying: “The Messages integration within the Muse Mac App is opt-in. Your Muse can solely learn Messages content material if macOS system-level Full Disk Entry is granted and the Messages connector is enabled.”
