Government spying through push notifications
Government authorities have been snooping on smartphone users via push notifications sent out by applications, wrote a US senator in a letter to the Department of Justice on December 6.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has requested that the Department of Justice relax any existing limits on concerns about push notification surveillance.
In the letter, Wyden wrote “I write to urge the Department of Justice (DOJ) to permit Apple and Google to inform their customers and the general public about demands for smartphone app notification records”
More about push alerts
Push alerts, he continues, are routed through a digital post office maintained by the phone's operating system suppliers. "Because Apple and Google deliver push notification data, they can be secretly compelled by governments to hand over this information," according to the letter. This might provide governments with information about how users engage with specific apps, give them a peek at the whole text of a notice, and reveal some exposed data.
Wyden petitioned the Justice Department to allow Apple and Google to be honest about government demands for push notification surveillance.
Google and Apple admit spying and praise the letter
Additionally, the two companies praised Wyden's letter and admitted that push notification spying has been going on for quite some time. Apple also stated that it was not permitted to publish government demands for push notification data, but that it would begin telling people about it immediately.
"In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," Apple stated, according to a Reuters report. "Now that this method has become public, we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests."
Even Google admitted the problem and stated that it supported Wyden's "commitment to keeping users informed about these requests." Google's transparency report already includes documentation of government demands for push notification data from users.
The rising concerns about government surveillance
Raising his concern in the letter, Wyden said “As 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. Importantly, app developers don't 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, respectively.”
Many users ignore push notifications, but they have sometimes caught the interest of technologists due to the difficulties of delivering them without passing data to Google or Apple.
Earlier in 2023, French developer David Libeau said that users and developers often remained oblivious to how their apps sent data to U.S. web giants via push notifications, labelling them "a privacy nightmare."