Foreign Governments Can Spy You Through Your Notifications

The US and other governments are spying you through your push notifications, both Google and Apple confirmed this.

According to a report by Reuters, US Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the US Department of Justice, saying that foreign officials were accessing data from both Apple and Google. Wyden said that his office asked both companies about the data, but they said that information was “restricted from public release by the government.”

Apps published in Google’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store are compelled to give data from users to these two companies, which puts them “in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps,” according to Wyden.

Both Google and Apple can access data provided by some apps’ push notifications, which may include private messages, emails previews or different sensitive information.

After the latest reports, both companies are now changing their policies, saying they will be more transparent in the future.

“Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests,” Apple said in a statement.

An anonymous source gave Wyden information about how these companies gave the data to governments. Though the source did not specify which governments accessed users’ data, they described them as democracies allied to the United States.

Though Apple and Google said they were changing its policies, you may still want to check which apps send you push notifications and if the information there is sensitive or important.