U.S. Government snooping on us through push notifications?

While I like my applications on my phone, including WhatsApp which uses a public phone number, I never thought that the government would be so bold as to ask apple or google to tell them about any type of notification we get on our phone from any particular application.

It shouldn’t matter if its a text message from your significant other, friend, foe or any app that gives you a service like Uber, Lyft, an app that let you know about postings like Facebook, Twitter or the like.

Now according to this article we’ll be linking to via Malwarebytes, our good friend (who we don’t know personally) Ron Wyden is asking the questions like he’s known to.

Apple says that they’ve been waiting for a letter like this so they can be more open, but I call bull shit.

No company should ever tell another what my messages, alerts, notifications of food delivery or WhatsApp messages coming in are at any time without my permission. Should it not be my business what I get?

The article by Malwarebytes gives us instructions on turning off the notifications, and steps for Android are also covered.

The article is titled US government is snooping on people via phone push notifications, says senator and if you care, feel free to read it.

While I don’t have anything to hide, and the notifications are important to me, I’m leaving well alone. For example, I just got notified as I type this about a detour. If I were out, its information I need.

Since I’m not going to post this right away and it’ll be delayed, you should know that these types of notifications would be of importance, even though the place its coming from is Twitter. That’s the decision we all need to make.

Thanks Ron for asking the tough questions. We love you.