Meta and Apple clash over Mac protection from AI agents

We wrote on October 2 that Apple is tightening control over Full Disk Access (FDA) in macOS because of AI-related risks. The story now has a sequel: Meta says FDA alone is not enough to protect against its Muse agent reading messages. Apple does not agree with that assessment.

Full Disk Access is a system permission that opens protected data on a computer to an app. The dispute shows that "the app was allowed" and "the data is protected" are not obviously the same thing: even the platform owner and the agent's developer disagree on whether one system setting is enough. For a company the takeaway is simple: an agent with broad access can potentially see an employee's messages, documents and email, so its rights should not be left at defaults.

List the apps and agents on your work Macs that have Full Disk Access switched on, and turn it off wherever it is not needed. While you are at it, find out who in the company is allowed to install such tools at all. It is safer when rights are set by role rather than for the whole disk: in 1Cifer every employee has their own agent, and it sees only the data of that role.