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– A number of governments, whose names have not been disclosed, are reportedly asking for mobile push notification records from tech giants Apple and Google.
– Push notifications can be understood as alerts that smartphone apps push to users.
– As per Senator Ron Wyden, these notifications move through a digital post office run majorly by providers like Apple or Google.
– This raises concerns because the company’s OS acts as a middleman who can access these notifications.
– The aim of these unnamed governments is to keep an eye on people who have piqued their interest.
It seems like governments have locked their sights on something big. And it’s not your dad’s old flip-phone; it’s your smartphone. Recently, a number of unspecified governments have been asking for a novel source of intelligence, i.e., mobile push notification records. Sounds like a video game cheat code, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. It’s the alerts from the various apps on your device that these governments are interested in.
If the term ‘push notifications’ has got you scratching your heads, let me put it into some perspective. As Senator Ron Wyden puts it, these are alerts, much like messages in a bottle, that are sent by phone apps to your smartphones. You see those notification numbers ballooning on your app icons? Those are your ‘hello’ messages from your apps, connecting to a digital post office, i.e., your Apple or Google OS.
The concerning part here is the underlying structure of how these push notifications work. They move through a ‘digital post office’ of sorts, which is essentially the phone’s operating system from companies such as Apple or Google. What does this mean? It means that the company’s OS acts as a middleman who can, in theory, access these notifications. Talk about having a little ‘push’ in ‘oversight’.
So, what’s the big picture here? Why are these unnamed governments so interested in these records? The simple answer is surveillance. By accessing these push notification records, these governments believe they can keep an eye on the citizens who’ve become their person of interest. Sounds like the plot of a dystopian sci-fi movie, right? Well, all we can hope is that the revolution won’t be a ‘push-notification’ away.
In this age of technological marvels and concerns about personal privacy, the recent move by unspecified governments to demand mobile push notification records from Apple and Google users sheds a new light on the depth of surveillance attempts. Push notifications, once just a means of user engagement, have taken a serious turn in the narrative, becoming a potential source for tracking users’ activities. Both Apple and Google, the tech giants serving as the main OS providers, find themselves in the center of this debate. And while we don’t know yet how these ventures will push out, we do hope the only things that keep popping in your notifications are the latest game updates or your pizza delivery status.Original Article: https://thehackernews.com/2023/12/governments-may-spy-on-you-by.html
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