Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications - US senator

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 6:27:00 Dan

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps' push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on Wednesday.

In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Apple (AAPL.O). Although details were sparse, the letter lays out yet another path by which governments can track smartphones.

Apps of all kinds rely on push notifications to alert smartphone users to incoming messages, breaking news, and other updates. These are the audible "dings" or visual indicators users get when they receive an email or their sports team wins a game. What users often do not realize is that almost all such notifications travel over Google and Apple's servers.

That gives the two companies unique insight into the traffic flowing from those apps to their users, and in turn puts them "in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps," Wyden said. He asked the Department of Justice to "repeal or modify any policies" that hindered public discussions of push notification spying.

In a statement, Apple said that Wyden's letter gave them the opening they needed to share more details with the public about how governments monitored push notifications.

More at https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments-spying-apple-google-users-through-push-notifications-us-senator-2023-12-06/

About the author

Dan

Dan

 

I'm a long-time user and enthusiast of open source software and espouse the philosophy that software code should be open (readable). So that everyone can see what happens behind the scenes while we use our electronic devices every day.