Tuesday, February 21, 2023 3:01 pmTuesday, February 21, 20232 Comments

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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is looking to require Apple’s App Store and Alphabet’s Google Play store to notify their customers when a mobile app is foreign-owned before it’s downloaded.

Brandon Gillespie for FOX Business:

In letters that she is sending to the companies’ CEOs on Tuesday, Moody calls for designations to be placed on such apps from countries that could pose a national security risk to Americans from adversaries like China, Russia and others.

“We must ensure that consumers have the information needed to make informed decisions about their data privacy and security,” Moody said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The existing lack of transparency in app stores can create a significant risk for American citizens and could cause their personal information to be exploited by foreign entities of concern.”

In her letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Moody states that certain foreign-owned applications, such as the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok, “have been flagged by national security experts as posing a risk to both privacy and user information.”

“In addition to data collection and unauthorized access concerns, such apps may also pose undue risks to users due to algorithmic recommendations, which can be used to carry out influence operations. Consumers cannot be expected to be aware of such risks without disclosure,” Moody writes.

MacDailyNews Take: The founder of FedEx, Frederick Wallace Smith, said it best:

Information about the package is as important as the package itself.

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