The Government Can Read Your Push Notifications

Your push notifications on your cellphone – that preview message from your boyfriend and work email or your cycle app reminding you your period is coming soon – are not private.

The not-so-surprising announcement comes after Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote to the DOJ requesting Apple and Google to inform the public how governments, including U.S. and foreign agencies (that's frightening), can demand app notification records. It is unknown which agencies have been spying on us, or for how long.

Last year, the senator's office "received a tip" that "government agencies in foreign countries were demanding smartphone ‘push’ notification records from Google and Apple,” wrote Wyden. “My staff have been investigating this tip for the past year, which included contacting Apple and Google. In response to that query, the companies told my staff that information about this practice is restricted from public release by the government.”

Apple and Google Respond

When your cellular device receives push notifications (including messages or alerts), Apple's and Google's servers act as a middleman to deliver these notifications. Wyden compared this process to a "digital post office." Because these companies handle these notifications, governments can ask them to hand over sensitive information if requested. Apple confirmed the news in a statement. “In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the tech giant wrote. "Now that this method has become public, we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.”

A spokesperson for Apple told Motherboard recently that they are "committed to transparency" and had "long been a supporter of efforts to ensure that providers are able to disclose as much information as possible to their users." The company's updated law enforcement guidelines will include a section on their push notification service. "The Apple ID associated with a registered APNs [Apple Push Notification service] token may be obtained with a subpoena or greater legal process,” the document stated.

A Google spokesperson confirmed in an email: “We were the first major company to publish a public transparency report sharing the number and types of government requests for user data we receive, including the requests referred to by Senator Wyden. We share the Senator’s commitment to keeping users informed about these requests.” There is no clarification on restrictions on publishing information relating to requests for push notifications. We may never know these details, but one thing's certain: Our privacy has been gone for a while.

“Apple and Google should be permitted to be transparent about the legal demands they receive, particularly from foreign governments,” Wyden explained. “These companies should be permitted to generally reveal whether they have been compelled to facilitate this surveillance practice, to publish aggregate statistics about the number of demands they receive, and unless temporarily gagged by a court, to notify specific customers about demands for their data. I would ask that the DOJ repeal or modify any policies that impede this transparency.”

If you haven't already, turn off those notifications.

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