Apple Modifies MacOS Full-Disk Access Permissions Following Privacy Concerns Over Artificial Intelligence Agents

Apple announced changes to its macOS privacy settings to stop third-party app developers from misusing them to access user message histories. The announcement follows an incident involving tech columnist Jason Aten, who reported that Meta’s new general-purpose artificial intelligence agent, Muse, sent him an unsolicited notification referencing a private message thread with a co-worker.

Aten stated he never gave Muse permission to read his messages. Meta Chief Technology Officer David Singleton responded that Muse can only read messages if users manually grant full-disk access at the system level and enable a specific messages connector setting in the app. However, macOS security expert Patrick Wardle questioned this explanation, noting that full-disk access makes all non-root files, chats, and browsing history readable.

Apple stated that some developers are using full-disk access in ways that risk exposing everything on user systems without their full knowledge and understanding.