Apple announced it is taking steps to tighten controls around the macOS Full Disk Access (FDA) setting because of security risks posed by AI agents, saying some developers use FDA "in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems — including files, mail, messages and even browsing history," and that for communication apps this can compromise the privacy of people users communicate with. Apple says FDA "largely bypasses controls designed to safeguard users' private data" and plans updates so the access is granted "only with an explicit user action"; no rollout date was given. The move follows a recent report that Meta's Muse agentic tool accessed a journalist's private iMessages after being granted Full Disk Access (Meta confirms this requires both FDA and its opt-in Messages connector), and comes weeks after researcher Patrick Wardle demonstrated a Zero-day PoC in Muse's Mac app. Why it matters: this is a platform-level control response to agentic-AI data-access risk — significant for Australian agencies and enterprises adopting AI agents on Apple hardware, and a template for how OS vendors will govern agent access.

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