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Article

30 Apr 2025

Author:
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Tech Crunch

Apple notifies an additional batch of spyware victims, including an Italian journalist and Dutch right-wing commentator

"Apple notifies new victims of spyware attacks across the world" 30 April 2025

Apple sent notifications this week to several people who the company believes were targeted with government spyware, according to two of the alleged targets...

...As of Wednesday, only two people appear to have come forward to reveal they were among those who received the notifications from Apple this week. 

One is Ciro Pellegrino, an Italian journalist who works for online news outlet Fanpage. Pellegrino wrote in an article that he received an email and a text message from Apple on Tuesday notifying him that he was targeted with spyware. The message, according to Pellegrino, also said he wasn’t the only person targeted. 

“Today’s notification is being sent to affected users in 100 countries,” the message read, according to Pellegrino’s article...

...The second person to receive an Apple notification is Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch right-wing activist, who posted on X on Wednesday...“Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone,” the Apple alert said, according to a screenshot shown in a video that Vlaardingerbroek posted on X. “This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously.”

Reacting to the notification, Vlaardingerbroek said that this was an “attempt to intimidate me, an attempt to silence me, obviously.”.. 

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