Privacy Settings to Check Before You Try an AI Agent

You’re about to try one of the new AI agents, and you should. They can watch your inbox, keep your calendar straight, and do the errands you keep putting off. You just want to be the one deciding what they see. This guide gives you the exact settings to check in about fifteen minutes: inside Muse first, then on Facebook and Instagram, on your iPhone and your Mac, and inside ChatGPT, Claude, and Google. Each one has the taps, in order, and a plain reason for why it matters.

Inc. columnist Jason Aten installed Meta’s new AI agent, Muse, on his iPhone and a Mac to try it. He says he chose not to give it access to his messages, calendar, or other personal information. Soon after, he was texting with a friend, his podcast co-host, about the new iPhones when Muse sent him a notification suggesting that conversation would make a good story. When he asked how it knew, Muse told him it was only seeing the text of incoming notification banners. He says he then found that Muse had synced his Mac’s Messages database, through row 187,462, while Full Disk Access on his Mac showed as off.

Meta disputes his account. Meta’s Andy Stone, its head of communications, said the Messages feature in the Muse app for Mac is entirely opt-in: “You have to enable both Full Disk Access and the Messages connector for Muse to be able to read your Messages content. It can’t read your Messages unless you do this.” Meta’s David Singleton said reading Messages takes three separate permission steps and that the Mac’s own protections can’t be circumvented, even by a bug. Aten says Full Disk Access was off on his Mac, and as of this writing the two sides still disagree.

You don’t have to settle that argument to act on it. The lesson is the same either way: before you hand an agent your accounts, know exactly what you’ve allowed, and check it yourself instead of trusting the setup screen. Meta already has a lot of your information if you use Facebook or Instagram, and Muse connects to those automatically when the accounts share an Accounts Center. The rest of this guide is the checking.

If you’ve installed Muse, do these five first. They’re the settings behind the story, and they take about five minutes. The first, second, and fifth are inside the Muse app on any device. The third and fourth are for the Mac app.

1. See what Muse is connected to.

1. Open Settings, then Connectors.
2. Expect Facebook, Instagram, and Threads on the list. Meta connects them on their own when those accounts are in the same Accounts Center as Muse.
3. Tap Disconnect on anything you didn’t mean to connect, like your email or your calendar.

Disconnecting stops Muse from exchanging data with that service. What it already pulled in can stay in your chats and its memory. Part 8 covers clearing that.

2. Make Muse ask before it acts.

1. Open Settings, then Permissions.
2. You’ll see two settings, Connectors and Web access defaults. Each one offers Ask for some actions or Always ask.
3. Choose Always ask for both. In Meta’s words, Muse will then ask before any action in a connected app and before accessing any website. “Ask for some actions” is looser: for Connectors it asks before every write and important read, and for websites it asks only when your information may be shared or the site is unfamiliar.
4. Below those, Manage permissions lets you set each Connector on its own, approve each scheduled task, and open Allowed websites, where you can revoke any site you’ve let Muse into.

3. On a Mac, set what Muse can read, app by app.

1. In the Muse app on your Mac, open Settings, then File System Access.
2. Every app that keeps information on your Mac is listed: Messages, Mail, Notes, Calendar, and others. Each one is set to Off, Read only, or Read and interact.
3. Set anything you didn’t choose yourself to Off. In Meta’s words, Off means “your agent can’t use the information that app keeps on your Mac.” Messages is the one from the story. Meta’s statement calls that setting “the Messages connector”; on Meta’s help page, this per-app switch is where it lives.

4. Check your Mac’s own permissions for Muse.

1. Open System Settings from the Apple menu, then Privacy & Security.
2. Meta’s help page names three permissions Muse asks for: Full Disk Access, Automation, and Notifications. Open each list and find Muse.
3. Switch Muse off in Full Disk Access unless you want it able to read files anywhere on your Mac, including the data behind Messages and Mail. This is the other half of Meta’s statement: without it, Meta says Muse can’t read your Messages.
4. Switch Muse off in Automation if you only want it to read your apps, not act inside them. Notifications can stay on. It only lets Muse tell you when a task is done.

5. Decide whether your chats train Meta’s AI.

1. Open Settings, then Data controls.
2. The switch that lets your Muse interactions train Meta’s AI is on by default, in Meta’s words. Turn it off if you’d rather not.
3. The same page has Download your Muse data, and Reset Muse, which deletes your chat history, files, and active tasks and can’t be undone.

When those five are done, you know what Muse is connected to, it asks before it acts, nothing on your Mac is readable unless you set it, and your chats train the model only if you choose. Now the rest of your accounts.

Start here, because this is where most people have years of forgotten connections. Every quiz, game, and “log in with Facebook” button you ever tapped may still be on the list.

1. Remove apps and websites you don’t use from Facebook.

1. On a computer, click your profile picture in the top right, then Settings & privacy, then Settings.
2. Click Apps and websites in the left menu. In the Facebook app, the same page is under Settings & privacy, then Settings. Look for Apps and websites.
3. Open the Active tab. This is every app and site that can currently see your Facebook information.
4. Click Remove next to anything you don’t recognize or don’t use, then Remove again to confirm.

Removing an app stops it from seeing your non-public information from now on. It may still have what it collected before, and you can contact the developer and ask them to delete it.

2. Do the same on Instagram.

1. In the Instagram app, open your profile and tap the three lines in the top right. The screen that opens is Settings and activity.
2. Scroll to App website permissions and tap Apps and websites.
3. You’ll see three tabs: Active, Expired, and Removed. Open Active and tap Remove next to anything you don’t use.

On a computer, click More in the bottom left, then Settings, then Website permissions under Your app and media, then Apps and websites.

If your account is private and you haven’t logged into an app with Instagram in the last 90 days, its access to your non-public information expires on its own. Removing it now saves you the wait.

3. See what Meta collects from other apps and websites.

In either app, open Settings, then Accounts Center, then Your information and permissions, then Your activity off Meta technologies. This is the record of what other businesses send Meta about you, like a visit to their website or a purchase in their store. Use Clear history to disconnect what’s there, and Manage future activity to stop new activity from being connected. It’s also the one page that shows you, in plain words, how much Meta already knows.

4. Know where the AI controls live.

Meta’s page on how it uses your information for AI is at facebook.com/privacy/guide/genai. It explains what Meta uses, including public posts and your chats with its AI, and it links to the forms for seeing and deleting that information. Muse’s own switch for this is in Part 2, step 5.

Your phone and your computer keep their own permission lists, separate from any account. This is the list that mattered in the Muse story, so look at it before you install an agent and again after.

On your iPhone

1. Open Settings, then Privacy & Security.
2. Tap each category you care about: Contacts, Calendars, Photos, Microphone, Camera, and Location Services. Each one lists the apps that asked for it.
3. Find any AI app on the list and switch it off, or set Photos to Limited Access so it sees only the pictures you pick.
4. Scroll to the bottom of Privacy & Security, tap App Privacy Report, and tap Turn On App Privacy Report. From now on, it shows you which apps used your location, camera, microphone, contacts, and more, and how often, over the past seven days. Check it a week after you try any new agent.

On your Mac

Open System Settings from the Apple menu, click Privacy & Security in the sidebar, and look at these four lists. Each one shows the apps that have the permission, with a switch beside each app.

A permission can come back on after an app updates or asks again, so this is a list to look at every month, not once.

Muse isn’t the only agent with its own switches. ChatGPT, Claude, and your Google Account each keep a list of what’s connected, and each one has a Disconnect button.

You don’t have to say no to everything. You have to say yes on purpose. Four rules keep you in charge.

Connect only what the job needs. An agent watching a flight price needs a web browser, not your email. An agent writing your morning brief needs your calendar, not your photos. When a setup screen asks for everything, skip it, and add a connection later when a specific job calls for it.

Start with read-only. Reading your calendar is one thing. Sending, deleting, and buying are another. Where a tool offers a read-only choice, like Muse’s Read only per app, take it first.

Keep “ask before acting” on. Muse has it under Permissions (Part 2, step 2), and a ChatGPT Dot has it under Custom rules in Settings. It makes the agent check with you before it sends, buys, or changes something. Leave it on until you’ve watched the agent work for a while.

Check again after every update. Settings move and permissions get re-asked. The App Privacy Report on your iPhone and the Privacy & Security lists on your Mac are a two-minute look once a month.

Here’s how you’d know an agent has more access than you gave it.

Turning access off doesn’t delete what was already copied. It stops new reading. In Muse, Settings, then Data controls, then Reset Muse clears everything, and it can’t be undone. Meta also says you can ask Muse in the chat to forget one specific thing. In other tools, delete the chats and memories, and ask the company to delete your data if you want to be sure.

The setup screen is not the check. What you clicked during setup is a request. The permission lists on your phone and computer are the truth. Look at those.

Trust the agent after it earns it. Give it one small job with one connection, watch what it does for a week, and then widen it. You get the help, and your information stays yours.

• Inc., Jason Aten: Meta’s New Muse AI Agent Read My Private Messages. I Never Asked It To, for what he says happened.
• TechCrunch: Meta disputes claim that Muse read a user’s private messages without permission, for Meta’s response and the quotes from Andy Stone and David Singleton.
• Meta: How Muse works with files and apps on your Mac, for Full Disk Access, Automation, and the File System Access settings.
• Meta: How Muse works with Connectors and How Muse handles your privacy, safety and security, for Connectors, Permissions, and Data controls.
• Meta: How to manage your Muse data, for Reset Muse.
• Facebook Help: Remove an app or game that you’ve added to Facebook and Instagram Help: Manage the privacy settings for apps and websites, for the Apps and websites steps.
• Apple: Controlling app access to files in macOS and Apple: About App Privacy Report, for the Mac and iPhone permissions.
• OpenAI: Connecting and managing app accounts in ChatGPT, Anthropic: Use connectors to extend Claude’s capabilities, and Google: Manage connections between your Google Account and third parties, for the disconnect steps.