App Notifications Have Proven To Be a Surveillance Nightmare. Here’s What To Do About Them.

Apple recently revealed that governments and law enforcement agencies have been quietly collecting users’ app notification records for years while forcing tech companies to keep quiet about it.

This surveillance is made possible because the vast majority of push notifications (notifications that are sent when an app is closed or running in the background) are sent by Apple and Google’s servers. Apple mandates the use of its push notification service which means that all push notifications to Apple devices are sent by Apple servers. Google does allow the use of alternative push notification services on Android but most developers use Google’s service.