Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google have been forced by foreign governments to provide users\u2019 data from notifications they get on their devices, according to a US lawmaker, drawing attention to a new privacy concern.<\/p>\n
In a letter published Wednesday, US Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon asked the Justice Department to allow the technology companies to discuss the practice publicly.<\/p>\n
The Democrat said the companies previously told him that the \u201cpractice is restricted from public release by the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
The senator\u2019s letter didn\u2019t specify which governments have sought notification data from Apple and Google, but indicated that they are foreign entities.<\/p>\n
After the publication of the\u00a0letter<\/a>,<\/strong> Apple confirmed it does receive such requests from foreign governments.<\/p>\n The US federal government \u201cprohibited us from sharing any information,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that this method has become public, we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Apple and Google have their own so-called push notification systems that provide instant alerts for everything from text messages to bank deposits to sports scores.<\/p>\n The companies deliver billions of notifications to users each month, and the systems are used by millions of third-party developers.<\/p>\n Notification data \u2014 if obtained by a government \u2014 could reveal a user\u2019s habits, communications and whereabouts.<\/p>\n They\u2019re potentially some of the most private pieces of information sent to a person\u2019s smartphone, tablet or computer.<\/p>\n \u201cAs with all of the other information these companies store for or about their users, because Apple and Google deliver push notification data, they can be secretly compelled by governments to hand over this information,\u201d Wyden wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cImportantly, app developers don\u2019t have many options; if they want their apps to reliably deliver push notifications on these platforms, they must use the service provided by Apple or Google.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to the letter, Google said it has already been publishing transparency reports that share \u201cthe number and types of government requests for user data we receive, including the requests referred to by Senator Wyden.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe share the senator\u2019s commitment to keeping users informed about these requests,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n Both companies said they have in-depth processes for either accepting or rejecting government requests.<\/p>\n And Apple now plans to break out the push notification requests it receives in its next transparency report.<\/p>\n \u201cApple is committed to transparency, and we have long been a supporter of efforts to ensure that providers are able to disclose as much information as possible to their users,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n Notification data \u2014 if obtained by a government \u2014 could reveal a user\u2019s habits, communications and whereabouts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":518977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[605,167,89166,91363,1361,19937,21397,82539,1337],"class_list":["post-518965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-apple","tag-google","tag-government-surveillance","tag-ron-wyden","tag-smartphones-2","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-us-department-of-justice","tag-us-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: 16-year-old reverse-engineers iMessage for Android app \u2014 Report<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"