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> Your cellular plan doesn't support iCloud Private Relay. If I understand correctly, there's no special "support" required from an ISP for Private Relay - the

> Your cellular plan doesn't support iCloud Private Relay. If I understand correctly, there's no special "support" required from an ISP for Private Relay - they just have to be a dumb pipe. So wouldn't it be more accurate to say "you cellular plan is actively blocking Private Relay"? I'd expect that kind of deceptive phrasing from the phone carriers, not, in this case, Apple, who has no interest in covering for the carriers.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Apple cooperated with AT&T's bullshit "5Ge" rebrand where they change the LTE status icon to "5Ge". Despite the appearances, Apple is absolutely in bed with the carriers.
- simfree 5y ago
  As did nearly every other vendor
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Pretty much "every other vendor" has a legitimate reason; they have little to no distribution network and rely on carriers to sell their devices. That's not the case for Apple who has both a decent network of Apple Stores around the country and sufficient brand loyalty to survive (and potentially even thrive) even if their devices become more difficult to buy.
    - giraffe_lady 5y ago
      If everyone else does that rebrand except them, they look like they're a generation behind on networking tech. They don't want to take that hit, or pay for the consumer education campaign to avoid it. I don't have an opinion about whether that's more or less legitimate than anyone else's reason but the incentives seem clear to me.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  But not on this private relay feature, apparently.
rcarmo 5y ago
That is precisely the problem here. Phone carriers do not want to be a dumb pipe - and having Private Relay go through their networks breaks: - HTTP header enrichment (which they use for self-care/customer sites/services), - zero rating (which they set up deals for with social networks, music streaming services, etc., often applying specific QoS tags) and - all sorts of value added services (many using deep packet inspection and DNS analytics) that they offer instead of raw, unfettered connectivity. I don't think many people are aware of exactly how much data telcos are sitting on, anonymized or not. And, of course, it also plays havoc with legal interception because there is no easy way to do MITM. (edit: readability)
- g_p 5y ago
  My understanding is that private relay only (for now) relays plain HTTP content from apps, and HTTP+HTTPS content from Safari. This means it likely shouldn't (currently) affect zero rating for apps, though it would affect header enrichment for first-party web based services. A native app shouldn't be affected, and given most services run on HTTPS, they won't be able to add headers to those requests anyway. The impact of losing visibility of plain HTTP is likely minimal given how much is HTTPS now. The impact of losing visibility of sites visited and DNS queries may impact on carrier 'value add' services like internet filter, malware protection, etc. Also it would be harder to link location based services in for web-based content, as they can't correlate the browsing session with the phone user. If Apple was to expand this to cover HTTPS traffic via apps, that would break a lot more. Carriers are desperately clinging to ways not to become dumb pipes, so it doesn't surprise me to see them resist these moves.
rosndo 5y ago
Private relay is still in beta, Apple can fight with carriers after they properly launch the product.

Nextgrid 5y ago

Apple cooperated with AT&T's bullshit "5Ge" rebrand where they change the LTE status icon to "5Ge". Despite the appearances, Apple is absolutely in bed with the carriers.

simfree 5y ago
As did nearly every other vendor
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Pretty much "every other vendor" has a legitimate reason; they have little to no distribution network and rely on carriers to sell their devices. That's not the case for Apple who has both a decent network of Apple Stores around the country and sufficient brand loyalty to survive (and potentially even thrive) even if their devices become more difficult to buy.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    If everyone else does that rebrand except them, they look like they're a generation behind on networking tech. They don't want to take that hit, or pay for the consumer education campaign to avoid it. I don't have an opinion about whether that's more or less legitimate than anyone else's reason but the incentives seem clear to me.
Tagbert 5y ago
But not on this private relay feature, apparently.

rcarmo 5y ago

That is precisely the problem here. Phone carriers do not want to be a dumb pipe - and having Private Relay go through their networks breaks: - HTTP header enrichment (which they use for self-care/customer sites/services), - zero rating (which they set up deals for with social networks, music streaming services, etc., often applying specific QoS tags) and - all sorts of value added services (many using deep packet inspection and DNS analytics) that they offer instead of raw, unfettered connectivity. I don't think many people are aware of exactly how much data telcos are sitting on, anonymized or not. And, of course, it also plays havoc with legal interception because there is no easy way to do MITM. (edit: readability)

g_p 5y ago
My understanding is that private relay only (for now) relays plain HTTP content from apps, and HTTP+HTTPS content from Safari. This means it likely shouldn't (currently) affect zero rating for apps, though it would affect header enrichment for first-party web based services. A native app shouldn't be affected, and given most services run on HTTPS, they won't be able to add headers to those requests anyway. The impact of losing visibility of plain HTTP is likely minimal given how much is HTTPS now. The impact of losing visibility of sites visited and DNS queries may impact on carrier 'value add' services like internet filter, malware protection, etc. Also it would be harder to link location based services in for web-based content, as they can't correlate the browsing session with the phone user. If Apple was to expand this to cover HTTPS traffic via apps, that would break a lot more. Carriers are desperately clinging to ways not to become dumb pipes, so it doesn't surprise me to see them resist these moves.

rosndo 5y ago

Private relay is still in beta, Apple can fight with carriers after they properly launch the product.