We’ve seen a number of examples of why giving Meta’s Muse app full disk access to your Mac is a very bad idea, and yet another major privacy issue has recently been discovered. It’s now been found that Muse analyzes your communication with everyone in your life on an hourly basis.
Apple is rightly concerned about the development, and in a blog post says that it will be introducing additional controls around the Full Disk Access feature that’s been enabling the problems …
The Meta Muse app made action urgent
Meta recently launched its Muse Personal AI Agent for iPhone and Mac. Despite the obvious inadvisability of giving a Meta app unfettered access to everything on your Apple devices, the app quickly jumped to the top of the App Store.
Predictably, it wasn’t long before things started to go horribly wrong. Things haven’t gotten any better since then, with Wired reporting that security researcher Karan Joshi found Meta had instructed Muse to extract all of the information needed to construct a complete map of all of your relationships.
One of Muse’s instructions appears to be the ability for it to create “a page for every person in the user’s life.” This hourly process involves compiling data on family, partners, friends, colleagues, “collaborators,” and people you “follow,” the instructions say […]
“Where they live, what they do, the threads that recur (the apartment move, the shared savings goal),” the instructions say. They add, too, that the model could record the “dates that matter,” such as birthdays or anniversaries. A person’s history could include backstory like “the trip in March, the argument that got resolved, the milestone last week.”
Apple tightening use of Full Disk Access
You would think a permission prompt to give an app “full disk access” to your Mac would be self-explanatory, but it appears not. Even tech-savvy people have been granting this access-all-areas pass to their machines without appreciating just how dangerous a step it is.
Apple says the feature was intended for backup apps, but developers are now using it for many more things, including AI agents. The company has said it intends to “introduce additional controls” to ensure users fully understand what they are doing if they grant this permission.
Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action.
Here’s what Apple must – and must not – do
Apple says it is “critical” to take this step, and I fully agree. When it’s become clear that the existing permission request doesn’t fully communicate the gravity of granting it, it’s essential that Apple ensure users genuinely understand what it is they are allowing.
What I’d like to see is far more explicit text advising people against doing it unless they are certain they understand the consequences. Something along the lines:
This app is requesting full disk access to your Mac, aka an access-all-areas pass to your data. Apple intended this feature to be used only by backup apps. If you grant permission, this app will be able to read all of your personal data, including all of your messages with other people. Giving permission is extremely dangerous and should never be done unless you are completely confident that you understand what the app will do with your data and that you have complete trust in the developer. Your default response to this permission request should be No.
Essentially, there is no wording that would be too strong. I’d also be fine with a one-off confirmation of the apps already given this permission.
Top comment by Peter
While I find Apple's periodic checking that I want to continue to offer location access to apps annoying, I do appreciate it. There was at least one time I realised I no longer wanted that level of access to be applied to a certain app. It also serves as a reminder to periodically think about what other apps might be using my location.
However, what Apple absolutely must not do is to make the mistake it made with macOS Sequoia over screen recording. Sure, this is also incredibly dangerous and very strong warnings are appropriate, but what Apple did then was to force us all to confirm these permissions on a weekly basis, as well as after every restart.
This was widely condemned as turning macOS into Microsoft Vista and imposing “a subscription you didn’t buy and can’t cancel.” In my view, Apple already goes too far in this direction with its occasional requests for repeated permission confirmations on iPhone. I gave Citymapper permission to access my location so that it can continue to provide directions in the background, for example, and no, Apple, I really don’t need you to check I still want this.
Yes, issue the strongest of warnings against granting full disk access, but if someone chooses to do so, then macOS must accept their decision. No forced confirmations, weekly or otherwise, thank you.
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