Apple tightens permission controls to lower agentic risk

Mac apps will need ‘explicit user action’ for full disk access

Apple is changing a key security feature to limit the impact of AI agents.

Introduced in macOS Mojave (10.14), Full Disk Access (FDA) is essentially a whitelist for the apps that are allowed to interact with your data. Only those with FDA have permission to fiddle with settings in Mail, Messages, Safari, Home and Time Machine; everything else is terminated as soon as it tries.

Now, a few days after Inc.com journalist Jason Aten claimed Meta’s Muse agent read his private messages on his iPhone and Mac without his permission (Meta disagrees), Apple is updating FDA with new controls aimed squarely at AI agents.

AI agents tend to run locally and are allowed to take actions on the user’s behalf – sending emails, moving files and so on. But to do so they need permissions, often beyond those Apple enables by default. Muse, for example, asks if users want to grant it FDA.

“Full Disk Access largely sidesteps [data] controls in order to allow backup apps to function properly on the Mac,” Apple says in a new blog post. “Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems - including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history - without users’ full knowledge and understanding.”

The company will introduce additional controls “going forward” (no date has been set yet) “to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action.”

Whether Muse went beyond the bounds of its permission in Aten’s case or not, Apple specifically says this change is aimed at AI agents.

“As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy.”