In a completely unsurprising turn of events, Meta’s Muse AI is stealing Apple Messages, past and present, and uploading the contents to its cloud, even if explicitly told not to.
Hard to have sympathy for anyone who willingly installs this on their device
Hard disagree! Yes, we know that Facebook does this. The average person doesn’t necessarily, and they still deserve privacy!
This victim blaming nonsense plays right into the corpo playbook. It’s the privacy equivalent of “with what she was wearing she was practically asking for it” and we all know that’s bullshit.
Just an FYI for anyone that didn’t know, your iMessages on your computer are literally just stored in a SQLite db. They’re very very easy to read without the app.
Source? AFAIK iMessages are stored encrypted by the Secure Enclave and can only be read through the same process that Touch ID works through. That’s why they can’t do iMessage through a browser because there must be a Secure Enclave present on the device. Pretty much the same reason Graphene OS only works on some devices.
Me? I wrote an app to read my iMessage database to pull two factor codes out and type them in automatically cause I was lazy.
Link to repo?
Seriously, this is the Internet… pics or it didn’t happen.
https://spin.atomicobject.com/search-imessage-sql/
This article is from years later. Seems like it got harder, but it’s still dead simple. Just give permission and then open the file.
This is describing the ability to read the messages from the actively booted and decrypted partition. This would absolutely not work without being able to log onto the machine. So while you are technically correct you are leaving out the caveat that this only works when you can also access the app not strictly without the app.
That is like a default ability in macOS tho?
It is now. At least for browsers. It was not at the time for the menu bar app my company required, Tunnelblick.
Is Android any better in this regard?
Not whatabouting, generally ignorant and curious.
I don’t think Android has a corresponding computer operating system so no? This doesn’t apply to iPhones or iPads. Just Macs. And I’m not even sure if it applies to M series MacBooks, but it applied to the old intel ones about 5 years ago at least which was the last time I read my messages that way.
Is the muse.ai logo supposed to be a sheep? If so, this story is pretty funny. Talk about the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Meta apps are usually spyware, yes.
without consent
I’m surprised the EULA doesn’t say “by using Muse you agree to any fuckin’ thing Meta/Muse wants to do including ones we haven’t thought of yet”.
Not that that constitutes “consent” in my book, but I wouldn’t think the article would say “without consent” if there was something in the EULA permitting them to do basically anything.
macOS is pretty protective over disk access as I have to constantly give apps permission to access folders like documents or iCloud. Though I assume anyone using something like muse is giving it full unrestricted access to the whole system.
I am shocked.
Meta Muse AI --> MetamuseaI -> Metamucil
wow. very shocker, many incrdible. wow!
Wait, Apple Messages aren’t e2ee? Or is it a question of color: green v. blue?
They are stored in an sqlite database which hasn’t changed format all that much
Long story short, don’t install AI on your phone or the AIC will enjoy your conversations?
I don’t know the answer to this, but the AI agent would be at one of the “ends” of the conversation, so e2ee wouldn’t be a particularly relevant promise to that scenario.
The most secure messaging system in the world won’t matter if you read all your messages with a camera over your shoulder.
E2EE protects what’s between the ends. But once a message is delivered to the end, the user can do whatever they want with it: screenshot or save the message, forward it to others, save it in a database open to others, etc.
How many times does it have to happen for folks to understand “telling an AI not to do something” doesn’t work reliably? Feels like the AI providers need to explicitly direct them to provide an explanation that such directives aren’t reliable and any expression of an agreement/promise doesn’t mean what one word intuitively think.
Same as Google reading the mail. Fuck US big brother tech.
I see me in 2029 using the Finger Protocol.
There’s a Metamucil joke somewhere in there, but I haven’t the energy
Give apple $10,000 for a bigger drive to fix this one issue
