Foreign governments are spying on smartphone users by forcing Apple and Google to turn over push notification records, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden warned in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday.
Wyden said his office investigated a tip last year alleging that government agencies had “requested” those records from both companies. Wyden noted in the article that because push notifications such as news notifications, emails, and social media notifications pass through Apple and Google’s servers, they can reveal some private information about how individual people use certain applications.
According to the article, governments can force Apple and Google to provide these records, just as they can force them to share other information they have about their users. However, Wyden said that information regarding push notification records cannot be made public in the United States.
Push notification records can show which app a notification was received from, when it was received, the phone and Apple or Google account the notification was sent to, and in some cases, the unencrypted text displayed in the notification, Wyden explained. However, the senator did not specify which governments requested push notification records from Apple and Google. A source confirmed to Reuters that US government agencies, as well as foreign government agencies, have requested information about push notifications from both Google and Apple.
“The federal government has prohibited us from sharing any information in this case. Now that this practice is publicly available, we are updating our transparency reports to detail such requests,” an Apple spokesperson told CNBC.
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