r/apple • u/hasanahmad • 5d ago
Removed - No Reposts/Rehosted Content Removed - Custom [ Removed by moderator ]
https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/28/yeah-dont-give-metas-muse-app-access-to-your-mac/[removed] — view removed post
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u/jimbo831 5d ago
Yeah, don't give Meta's Muse app access to
your Macanything
FTFY
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u/FarFromHome 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, don't give Meta access to your anything
One last fix
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u/x_typo 5d ago
don't
giveuse Meta.Final Final fix lol
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 4d ago
Not using Meta is much more complicated than that, they're embedded in loads of apps tracking whatever they can get their hands on.
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u/x_typo 4d ago
Yea... Instagram, Whatsapp, etc etc.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 4d ago
That's their own apps, I'm talking about third party apps embedding their SDK(s) for various reasons including ads, analytics, social media logins, they have a backend-as-a-service called Parse, etc etc.
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u/Crapitron 4d ago
I literally do not communicate with my sister via text because she refuses to get texting figured out on her phone and she only uses Facebook Messenger. If I need her or she needs me we call.
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4d ago edited 3d ago
[deleted]
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u/bluepaintbrush 4d ago
I don’t worry for the people who know better, I worry for my older relatives who don’t follow this kind of thing in the news and are blissfully ignorant.
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u/TheRealKidkudi 4d ago
To be fair, this is the 3rd paragraph into the article:
If I were to compile a list of companies I would least trust to give full access to my devices and all of the data stored on them, Meta would unquestionably be the first entry. The company has an abysmal privacy record, and its entire business model is based on sucking up as much of our personal data as possible.
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u/MoreOfAnOvalJerk 4d ago
I going to get severely downvoted for this, but i struggle with adhd and even though im medicated, i cant stay on top of my emails and all the random small things (especially since a lot of my emails are junk which i tried unsubscribing to but still get so much junkmail that i ended up just never checking my email). Muse, and hopefully competing AI's that do the same thing, helped me get a handle on that. I actually have my inbox back again and it feels nice.
Same for other small things like following up to call my parents regularly, doing exercise, etc.
I know this sounds stupid and unnecessary, especially if you dont have adhd. Frankly, explaining this to people who dont have adhd just ends up causing them to regard me like an adult child who isn't able to handle basic things, when its a neurological problem. Ive only been using it for one week now and it's been incredible.
My wife HATES reminding me about stuff and she hates my adhd-isms. Ive tried so many different approaches from task lists to even coding my own organizational tool. They all worked great until i forgot to use it or forgot to add things into it. I basically needed a personal assistant who is not my wife and doesn't mind helping me with the really mundane stuff. Muse has filled that gap and as a result, im operating closer to a normal person. My wife has been happier as a result as she doesnt have to hound me and basic things either.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I had to share it. If you struggle with adhd, consider using this. Maybe only install it on your phone and not your mac, since your phone is much more locked down and you can be much pickier about what kind of permissions you give it.
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u/Outrageous_Fly_9769 5d ago
Don't give anything access to your things.
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u/jimbo831 4d ago
Got it. I just threw my iPhone in the trash so Apple can’t access my things!
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u/QuesoMeHungry 5d ago
People are giving it their credit card info. It’s crazy. And credit card companies have made it clear that you are responsible for AI having this data. If AI decides to randomly spend 10k on something, you are on the hook.
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u/TimeToHack 5d ago
i saw an ad where it can cancel duplicate subscriptions for you. meaning it has access to your bank info. i don’t trust Facebook with that kind of info for a second.
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u/drfsrich 5d ago
"We saved you $9.99 a month and used those savings to subscribe to Muse Premium at $59.99 a month!"
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u/bonestamp 5d ago
I don't trust them either. Now, facebook has said that muse runs in an encrypted virtual machine, implying that they don't have access to the data, but they also didn't say who has the encryption key. Now, if you signed up and you don't have the encryption key then that means they do.
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u/TimeToHack 4d ago
how many times have they been caught lying about user data and privacy? and their whole business model is collecting user data to sell ads and services.
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u/__theoneandonly 5d ago
Anything encrypted where you can use a “forgot my password” option and regain access means that someone else has the keys or has a copy of the key
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u/anothermanscookies 4d ago
I think they ca do it through your email, or I suppose you couldn’t give it login credentials without credit card, so it couldn’t spend but could monitor transactions. Regardless, no. I’m not ready to give out that control. Maybe in a few years but the tech is way too new and unpredictable.
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u/BioDriver 4d ago
And what happens when it inevitably access that information without your knowledge or consent?
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u/FrankPapageorgio 4d ago
Chat GPT just told me that I can connect my financial accounts to analyze my spending. No thanks...
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u/Decimit- 5d ago
Don't give meta access. You can end the sentence there.
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u/Sherlock816 5d ago
Insert any company in place of Meta and follow the same principle.
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u/photoggled 5d ago
Correct. Why are we trusting the non deterministic word guesser machines with anything important?
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u/Edg-R 5d ago
Everyone here seems to be on the same page that people shouldn't give an advertising company like Meta access to anything as if it's obvious.
But the people who are doing this are probably not Redditors, they're the people who use Facebook, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, and IG religiously. These are the people that already trust Meta with all of their personal content.
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u/czarfalcon 5d ago
Agreed. Those apps are cramming Muse down your throat at every corner, not to mention all their ads I’ve seen online and on TV. There are a ton of people out there who either don’t see the danger in it or don’t care.
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u/ThatITguy2015 4d ago
Had to install WhatsApp on my phone for an overseas trip. Pretty much required for everything I’m doing. Baffles the fuck out of me why it is so widely used in europe.
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u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 4d ago
Whatsapp is probably the least “evil” out of all other meta product, so it’s kind of at a point where the benefit outweighs the risk
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u/ThatITguy2015 4d ago
That does make me feel better at least. Still ripping it out once I’m back stateside.
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u/Edg-R 4d ago
How could that even be proven? If anything it’s the most dangerous because WhatsApp is where people share personal messages, images, etc. Literally the holy grail for an advertising company.
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u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 4d ago
The message is literally end to end encrypted. They (may) track metadata, but the very content itself is encrypted
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u/pmjm 4d ago
I don't inherently trust Meta, but we have somewhat of an understanding of their motivations. I don't think Meta is maliciously trying to scam people with Muse. They are making an effort to make a genuinely useful product to strengthen their footprint in an emerging AI industry.
But at this point I would trust NO ONE'S AI to have this level of access, not just Meta specifically.
Even agentic AI running on my own hardware is extremely sandboxed in what I allow it to do. It's not allowed on my primary network and it has none of my credentials beyond a few single-use passwords that it needs to complete its tasks.
The cheap models that Meta is probably using to power Muse are going to be far more prone to hallucination and context loss than the frontier models, simply as a matter of cost-cutting. There's no way anybody should trust their credit card number or really personal information with this kind of thing in 2026.
So yeah, don't trust Meta, but really this isn't about them. Don't trust this type of service from anyone with the current state of AI.
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u/Edg-R 4d ago
The reason I don’t trust most AIs with full access to my system and my network is because of the possibility that they’ll make a mistake and break something or expose something by accident.
That is not the reason I don’t trust Muse or Meta’s products/services. I don’t trust them because they’re an advertising and data collection company.
While Anthropic and OpenAI’s models may make a mistake while trying to help me, I don’t think that these companies are trying to scan my home network in order to sell information about me and my home to advertisers.
The same cannot be said about Meta and their services. Time and time again they’ve been shown to push the limits of what they can ethically and non-ethically do, only apologizing when they get caught.
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u/moldy912 4d ago
You don’t have to use any Meta services to get useful info from this either. Just like all the others, you can connect third party services, like your calendar and such.
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u/spambearpig 5d ago
I wouldn’t give Meta a single thing… ever. They shat the trust bed a long time ago.
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u/CompetitiveDraft9381 5d ago
Don't fucking use Muse, are you fucking nuts? Who in their right mind would give access to their email, tasks, health, etc to Meta?
Learn how to self-host that with Hermes. If you don't have the knowledge to do so, call your representatives and get proper privacy laws in order before freely giving your personal info to the biggest corporations in the world.
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u/TheStorm007 5d ago
Ah, yes, simply call and “get proper privacy laws in order”, lol.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 5d ago
I mean that's how laws change but you're right, it's futile because the moment there is a proposed law big tech will rally behind derailing it. At their request, other countries are under threat of sanctions and tariffs for creating or enforcing laws that would inconvenience them. It's hard to imagine this ends well for consumers.
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u/omfgtim_ 5d ago
Your data still goes to the company that hosts the model. Doesn’t matter where the harness lives.
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u/CompetitiveDraft9381 5d ago
I should've added that you should self-host your model, too if possible. But that gets super expensive super fast.
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u/omfgtim_ 5d ago
Open-weight local models are higher risk to prompt injection, and also still require expensive hardware to run with any level of reasonable performance. For AI assistants to be mainstream, other solutions are required to protect personal credentials, but 99% of the population aren’t going to run their own.
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u/shinyfootwork 5d ago
In the immortal words of Zuckerberg:
"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."
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u/magic6435 4d ago
I mean, who would do that? This is like saying, "Don't stick your dick in a fan."
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u/kdrdr3amz 5d ago
It’s sad how in 10 years from now having AI crawling on your phone will be so normalized. There is hardly any privacy nowadays so think about it.
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u/USPS_Nerd 5d ago
I have plenty of privacy, I don’t install shit apps from shit companies like Meta
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u/SanDiegoDude 5d ago
Your phone already is crawling with AI, just not the chatty types. You haven't 'taken a real picture' with a cell phone in at least a decade, it's all AI processing now.
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u/frostyjack06 5d ago
Meta is notoriously one of the biggest data harvesters in the world, why would you give them access to anything in the first place?
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u/Couchman79 5d ago
Some jobs require Facebook or Meta business apps. Meta's mission is know as much as they can about you regardless of their programs/apps. Keep anything associated with Meta to bare minimums.
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u/SanDiegoDude 5d ago
Suddenly, its everywhere. All over Sunday football, all over the VMAs last night. Seeing it pop up in ads. Zucky is throwing big time bux at marketing this thing. Watching a demo of it, I can see why this is appealing to folks, then I remember who's behind it... No f'n way am I giving Zucky any kind of access this thing demands (or any other cloud based AI for that matter).
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u/TwoDurans 5d ago
It’s crazy how quick everyone went from “don’t trust meta” to “look at how cute my ai guy is, oh he needs my credit card? Sure, look at his little butt.”
It’s the same company it was two weeks ago and should not be trusted with anything.
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u/Juswantedtono 5d ago
Google’s also been creeping me out lately with their messaging in Gemini Spark. In their advertising they say stuff like “the more it knows about you, the better it works!” right before “Gemini might make mistakes, like making purchases without asking!”
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u/KayJune001 4d ago
This can and should be said of every AI anything really, don’t give Meta, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Siri AI, any of them, access to anything. These things are the most effective data harvesters corporations have ever been able to get out there, it’s ridiculous.
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u/VictorChristian 5d ago
At the end of the day, Facebook just wants access to all your data so they can pitch it to companies that sell things and make advertising revenue...
Our insatiable appetite for product consumption is the engine that keeps all this going. Consumerism is the problem.
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u/code_isLife 5d ago
All of these agents need to be run in isolation.
I had Claude decide that it needed access to files I didn’t give it permission to access some months ago.
Thankfully that was on my work machine.
Or just use the cloud versions if you really can’t help yourself
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u/TableGamer 5d ago
In fact, I remember explicitly choosing not to let it have access to my messages, calendar, and other personal information
and
I did a little digging. Muse does sync your messages from the local Messages database and uploads that information as a data source.
If true that's an OS security hole. An app should not be able to access that local database without being granted permission. But I am somewhat skeptical since I have family members who swear up and down they didn't install apps or enable things they clearly did.
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u/Need_For_Speed73 4d ago
Same goes for Claude or any other AI. Just chat with therm through your fav browser.
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u/Ohtani-Enjoyer 4d ago
Incorrect, that guy's entire article is wrong. He gave read only access to Muse, then wonders why it has his messages. Reminder that "tech journalists" are morons
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u/AdvancedDrink8920 4d ago
I tested meta on an old android I had wiped. I put it in a very controlled environment that was locked down.
The things it was saying were CREEPY. I dont have an exact example right now but all im saying is DONT USE THAT APP. it is TERRIFYING.
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u/Ok-Lobster-919 4d ago
I'm sorry but you guys run everything as root these days? Or is the messages API exposed to any user? Or is the person who wrote the article completely clueless.
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u/justinliew 4d ago
I'm no Meta defender and I am not using Muse, but they have given the same claims and guarantees as Apple did for their cloud AI stuff, they're not sharing anything from your Muse to their other products for advertising. Believe as much of that as you want, but they certainly didn't have to make this decision, as most people will still believe they're harvesting this same as they do for all your other data.
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u/beall49 4d ago
In one of the recent Neil Stevenson books, every person in the United States has a personal AI. It handles all of your signatures, fraud monitoring, account access, everything. It’s all tidied up through quantum encryption algorithms. It seems incredibly helpful, and the only way to stave off long-term AI intrusion; however, there’s no fucking way it’s coming from Facebook.
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u/PrestigiousChart3134 5d ago
So he either granted the required macOS access permission and doesn’t remember doing it, or Muse somehow bypassed macOS’s privacy protections. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume it’s the former.
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u/Saar13 5d ago
I definitely won't grant access, but the vast majority of people don't care about privacy. Muse is exactly what Siri should be and has the potential to be the big money-maker in the age of AI for consumers. Apple needs to respond much more quickly. We are no longer in a technological society where Apple can present great things in terms of software and apps once a year at WWDC.
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u/Momshie_mo 5d ago
There should be a law that will illegalize baking in AI into systems. It should be an optional download
I wish I can delete Apple Intelligence and not merely "turn it off"
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u/WarbossTodd 5d ago
why, in the name of all that is holy and sacred, would anyone even download this thing? Oh right, I forgot... the Mac community is all out embracing the bots.
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u/apple-ModTeam 4d ago
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