Apple Now Requires a Court Order to Hand Over Your Push Notification Info

Your iPhone push notification data is now more secure than it was last week.

In case you missed it, governments and law enforcements agencies can spy on your through your push notifications. It's not great; in fact, it's more reason than ever to disable your notifications for good. However, the tide is turning ever so slightly: Apple will now require a judge's approval before handing over your push notification information.

Last week, Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the DOJ imploring them to allow Apple and Google to alert their users whenever a government or law enforcement agency requested their push notification data. This letter got the attention of everyone from tech journalists to politicians, as the lede came as a bit of shock. "What do you mean governments can request our push notification information?" The letter didn't ask the DOJ to shut down this foreign interference: It asked the agency to free up Apple and Google to warn us about it happening in the first place.

The silver lining in the letter is that Apple responded, saying that Wyden's public request made it possible for the company to speak more on the subject. While we haven't heard much in the week since, today, that changed.

Your push notification data is safe, until a judge says otherwise

As discovered by Reuters, Apple quietly updated its law enforcement guidelines this week. Now, the company will refuse to hand over your push notification data to anyone who comes looking for it, unless they have a judge's order to do so. Apple will basically ask governments and law enforcement, "Got a warrant?" As it happens, this is already Google's policy, so Apple is playing a bit of catch up here.

While it's still not great that governments and law enforcement agencies can demand this data from Apple and Google, at least now the legal system adds an extra barrier between you and your info. Unless you end up in a situation where a judge agrees that your privacy should be violated, you should be safe from these demands for your push notification data. Of course, I'm not against disabling all but your most essential alerts just in case.