The most useful thing Muse does with an inbox is also the thing that worries people most. This week a user who describes himself as a software engineer posted a detailed warning on r/MetaAI. We have not verified his claims against Meta's systems, so what follows is his account plus how other users respond to it.
What he reported
His central point: Muse's automatically generated Feed draws on every source you connect, such as Gmail or social accounts, and it does this through background tasks that run whether or not you asked for anything. He said there is no per-source, per-feature permission. Connect Gmail so the agent can help with your inbox, and the Feed can read your mail too. He also said what the Feed reads goes into the shared memory the agent uses everywhere, and that chats can be used for training unless you opt out under Settings, then Data Controls.
His proposed fix is a product change: per-feature control over which connected sources each feature may use. He filed that as an anonymous feature request from inside Muse and posted the exact wording so others could paste it in and do the same.
How other users answered
The replies split three ways. Some said that if privacy is the priority, Muse is the wrong tool, and pointed to self-hosted alternatives. Some said the whole value of the product is that it knows you and can act, and that they had accepted the trade knowingly. And one gave a practical middle path: create a separate email address for the agent, treat it like an employee, provision only the resources it needs, and copy it on the messages that matter.
That last idea also fits what people in other threads use Muse's inbox access for, such as clearing years of spam and unsubscribing from old accounts. A dedicated address gets you those jobs without handing over everything.
A short checklist
- Decide what the agent is for before you connect anything, and connect the least that does that job.
- Prefer a dedicated inbox or account for the agent where you can, and forward or copy it what it needs.
- Open Settings, then Data Controls, and read the training and review options before you rely on the product.
- Assume anything connected can be read at any time, not only when you ask, until Meta says otherwise.
- If you want per-feature permissions, file the request. Product teams count those.
None of this is a reason to avoid the useful jobs. It is a reason to set the agent up the way you would set up a new assistant with access to your accounts: deliberately.