Every time you get a popup notification from Facebook — hey, check out Aunty Edith’s cute cat pix! — the company is engaging in “aggressive” data harvesting.

Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X and many other apps are using popup notifications to spy on you.

Using notifications, these companies can gather a ton of data, including your “system uptime, locale, keyboard language, available memory, battery status, device model, display brightness, to mention a few,” according to security researchers.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to block these pernicious practices. Here’s how to do it.

Also in today’s newsletter:

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team

A message from Web Oracle

Tweetz o’ the day

One more thing ...

❝

My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary.

— Steve Jobs, 2011.

Today’s poll

Results from last Friday’s poll: What do you think of Apple's plans to open up iOS?

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Subscribe to The Weekender — Get the week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.

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