12 November

When your Mac opens an app downloaded from the internet, macOS's Gatekeeper feature connects to Apple to check whether the app contains known malware and whether the developer's certificate has been revoked, and Apple's support page, checked on 8 November 2026, says the malware check (notarization) runs over an encrypted connection and that your IP address is not logged during certificate checks. Engadget reported that Apple confirmed on its system status page for developers a problem with the notarization service on the afternoon of 12 November 2020, US Eastern time, and that in the same window Macs could hang for minutes or fail to open third-party apps, whether or not they had been updated to the new macOS Big Sur. A security researcher argued in a blog post that day, and in later additions, that macOS sent Apple an identifier for every program it ran, unencrypted and together with the user's IP address, while Apple's support page, updated on 16 November, stated that data from these checks had never been combined with information about users or their devices. The same page said Apple had stopped logging IP addresses for developer certificate checks and promised improvements within a year, including an encrypted protocol for certificate revocation checks and a setting that lets users opt out of the checks; the current page no longer carries that promise or any sentence on those two changes. In System Settings, under Privacy & Security, the Security section is where you choose which sources your Mac can open apps from (the App Store only, or also identified developers); the current support page describes no setting for turning the online checks off, and neither do its Taiwan and mainland China versions, both published on 1 June 2026 with the same privacy section.