Did Meta's AI Read Your Private Texts? What Meta Says
Meta says its Muse AI assistant did not read a user's private messages without permission.
Andy Stone, Meta's VP of Communications, said so on Sept. 30. He was replying to a first-hand story by Inc. columnist Jason Aten. Stone said Meta does not believe Muse read messages without user consent. TechCrunch
Aten's story ran on Sept. 19 as "Meta's New Muse AI Agent Read My Private Messages. I Never Asked It To". He said Muse read his private messages without being asked. Inc.
Stone said the Messages link in the Muse app for Mac is fully opt-in. Muse cannot read Messages unless the user turns on Full Disk Access and the Messages connector. Think of Full Disk Access as a key to your filing cabinet. It is a Mac setting that lets an app see much of the computer. The connector links Muse to Apple Messages.
The user must first allow Full Disk Access, then pick None, Read only, or Read. Those picks stay grayed out until Full Disk Access is on.
Allowing Full Disk Access opens Mac Settings. The user must approve by hand. Muse then fully restarts.
David Singleton, an executive in Meta Superintelligence Labs, said reading Mac messages takes three separate steps in the app plus built-in Mac safety checks. He said those checks cannot be gotten around even if Muse had a bug.
The broader context here is the gap between settings and memory. On paper this is clear permission. In daily life people click fast through setup, then forget what they allowed.
In my view, that gap explains these disputes. Builders look at the switches. Users think about what they meant when they asked. Both make sense, but they clash when the helper shows private data the user forgot it could see.
Looking at what this means for builders, the current controls are needed but probably not enough. Levels such as None, Read only, and Read give control. Mac checks stop hidden access. What is still missing is a short note saying which places were checked, and an easy off switch for one job.
Worth flagging alongside that point is the longer view. Helpers across calendars, files, and messages will help because people will not retype facts. My kids grew up expecting that, and got impatient when software could not do it. The job now is to keep that help while making access easy to see.
