Apple says it is changing macOS privacy settings to prevent third-party app developers from misusing them to access message histories.
Friday’s announcement comes two weeks after technology columnist Jason Aten said that Muse, Meta’s new general-purpose AI agent, sent him an unsolicited notification that referenced a thread between him and a coworker about Apple Messages. Aten said he never gave Muse permission to read his messages and assumed they were banned. Last week, social media exploded with masses of people agreeing and saying the incident showed that AI assistants given access to calendars, emails, messages, shopping accounts and other resources are similar to a chainsaw or other power tool. While potentially useful, they can cause real damage if not used carefully.
he said/she said
Meta CTO David Singleton joined the fray with a rebuttal that looked solid. For Muse to access Apple Messages, a user must manually grant it two privileges. One is full disk access, a macOS system-level permission. The other is to enable a Messages connector setting in Muse.
“The integration of Messages into the Muse app for Mac is voluntary,” Singleton said. “Your Muse can only read the contents of Messages if full disk access is granted at the macOS system level and the Messages connector is enabled.”
Singleton’s involvement was clear. Muse could have read Aten’s Messages communications only if he had enabled both settings, and if so, the columnist had only himself to blame, and certainly not Meta.
Earlier this week, I spoke with macOS security expert Patrick Wardle, who questioned Singleton’s denial. Their reasoning: “From a technical point of view, with FDA (full disk access), any (non-root file) is readable, browsing history, browser cookies, chats, etc, etc, etc.” I asked Meta how Muse couldn’t read messages when the app had full disk access, while any other app with that privilege could. Meta PR’s only response was to quote Singleton as saying: “The integration of Messages into the Muse for Mac app is optional. Your Muse can only read the contents of Messages if full disk access is granted at the macOS system level and the Messages connector is enabled.”
