Apple will not provide government organizations access to your notification information unless

Apple will now need a court warrant before providing law enforcement with information on its users’ push notification histories. Apple has revised its rules for law enforcement, stating that in order for it to surrender “The Apple ID associated with” an Apple Push Notification Service token, search warrants, and court orders are now necessary.

“An order under 18 U.S.C. §2703(d) or a search warrant may be obtained with the Apple ID associated with a registered Apple Push Notification Service (APNs) token and associated records,” the firm said in the update.

Push notifications, such as a notice about a new text message or a news update, are rapid alerts sent by applications to smartphone users. The app supplier does not send them straight to the consumers’ cellphones. Google already has a policy in place requiring judicial orders.

US Senator Ron Wyden alerted the Justice Department last week to the existence of certain unnamed states monitoring Apple and Google phone users via push notifications. According to the letter, his agency was notified in 2022 that foreign government agencies were requesting smartphone “push” notification information from Apple and Google.

“Over the past year, my staff has been looking into this tip, and they have gotten in touch with Apple and Google.” The corporations responded to that inquiry by informing my staff that the government has banned the public distribution of information about this practice,” the letter said.

Last week, an official from Google told TechCrunch that the firm is in line with Wyden’s “commitment to keeping users informed about these requests.”

Google claims that it was the first big business to provide a public transparency report detailing the quantity and kind of requests for user data it receives from the government, including the ones mentioned by Senator Wyden.

As per Apple, an APN token is issued and registered to that developer’s device when consumers permit an installed application to receive push notifications. According to the business, “some apps may have multiple APNs tokens for one account on one device to differentiate between messages and multi-media.”