Governments can spy via smartphone push notifications, Apple and Google confirm

Well, here's something you might have never considered: Your iPhone and Android device push notifications can be used by law enforcement or governments to spy on you.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice with a concern that his office was attempting to investigate. According to Senator Wyden's letter as first reported by Reuters, his office received a tip in the Spring of last year about how foreign governments were requesting push notification data from companies like Apple and Google.

Wyden said that his office tried to find out more from Apple and Google, but were told by the companies' employees that information about push notification data was "restricted from public release by the government."

Now, Apple and Google are changing their policies based on these latest reports, which have made the push notification access issue public.

"In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," Apple said in a statement. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests."

"We share the Senator's commitment to keeping users informed about these requests," Google also said in its own statement about the issue.

Generally, a third-party developer retains the data associated with users' accounts on any app that they release via the App Store, Google Play, or other mobile application marketplaces. However, the data sent to users' phones via push notifications typically does go through Apple or Google, meaning those companies then have access to whatever data was sent through those notifications. Those companies can then be compelled by government requests to hand over that data. Depending on what app a particular user has, those push notifications can contain very personal or sensitive data.

So if you're concerned now about how much information can be gathered about you through push notifications, it may be time to go to the settings on your iPhone or Android device and turn those notifications off.