• by Laurie Sullivan , 92 minutes ago

Apple has tightened its full disk access (FDA) on macOS to force agentic apps to require preauthorization before bypassing standard system controls. The move was made public on Friday in a blog post.

The company said it did this to ensure those who wish to grant an app access to their data on a device running macOS can do so only with very explicit user action.

By restricting FDA and forcing user preauthorization, Apple can shut down any loopholes that agentic AI applications and desktop assistants can use to harvest personal user context for ad targeting.

"Addressing this is critical," Apple wrote in a post. "As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially."

Apple wrote that it wants users to be aware of its full commitment, so they clearly understand these risks before granting such access.

Full Disk Access is a type of permission in macOS, Apple's operating system, designed primarily for system utilities such as backup software.

When granted, it allows an app to bypass standard sandbox setting. That means it can read a user's entire drive, including private emails, message histories, photos, and web browsing history, according to Apple.

On Sept. 14, 2026, Apple also began blocking The Trade Desk globally from accessing content across its devices. It was triggered with the public release of iOS 27, Apple's latest major operating system update.

The event escalated last week when The Trade Desk engineers filed an urgent ticket on WebKit Bugzilla and then realized Apple had not only blocked their post-cookie tracking framework, uidapi.com, but also bundled their core ad-serving domain, adsrvr.org, into the blocklist.

This completely locked The Trade Desk out of Safari's ad auctions.

"The intent seems to be to hard block domains that power 'post-cookie' identity," Ian Meyers, senior engineer at The Trade Desk, wrote in a post on bus.webkit.org. "However, adsrvr.org is The Trade Desk's core ad request and delivery domain, not identity. The 'match' subdomain operates on the basis of legacy third-party cookies.

Advertisers need to know that Apple blocked The Trade Desk from serving ads on Safari, meaning brands are unable to reach consumers on Safari web inventory on updated iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Open web display, native, and video programmatic ads running via The Trade Desk targeting Safari are failing on the web, but last known targeting options suggest ads do reach consumers on connected TV (CTV), digital out-of-home (DOOH), and retail media networks (RMNs), as they do not rely on Safari web environments.