9 ms·

About iCloud Private Relay

129 points by andrewstuart 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lelandfe 5y ago
Only works with Safari on macOS, which means I’ll never use it there. And I wound up turning it off on iOS because it made my life more annoying - go into the subway and try to connect to the free MTA WiFi? Alert! Your browsing is unprotected. …plus I found I would sporadically get connection issues that I resolved by turning it off. It’s a bummer because I would like to use it, and it being bundled with iCloud is nice.
- currysausage 5y ago
  No Google suggestions for me in iOS Safari when using Private Relay.
- dijit 5y ago
  > go into the subway and try to connect to the free MTA WiFi? Alert! Your browsing is unprotected. I haven't used it myself, but it seems reasonable to inform laymen that browsing to a captive portal system will be unprotected. I'm not sure how eggregious the error actually is. > …plus I found I would sporadically get connection issues that I resolved by turning it off. Not defending Apple in particular, but connectivity will decrease with every extra hop you make in your connection; you'll notice this when browsing the internet with tor (or, heaven forbid trying to use IRC over tor). it makes sense that you would have more connectivity issues when using any kind of proxy; and it would get worse with every extra layer of proxy.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    Not sure what “connectivity will decrease” means in practice, but I’d see problems like pages refusing to load over multiple refreshes, texts not sending, or iCloud data (messages, photos, etc) simply not updating until I switched the service off. I’m not as convinced as you that these problems are inherent to the service, and I’m holding out hope for what Private Relay looks like when it emerges from beta. > I'm not sure how eggregious the error actually is Not egregious - annoying. Unusual for Apple. I don’t want to use a service that spits alerts at me as I walk around the city.
- ec109685 5y ago
  The connection issues don’t happen anymore. It was annoying before where things would just hang and then turning off and on would fix it. I haven’t seen that in months, so they must have fixed the issue.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    Nice! I'll give it another shot.
maxpert 5y ago
I love it! Using this I’ve seen FB/Google having less and less information about my exact location. Seeing less relevant ads is assuring and relieving! The only wish I have is a more fluent way to enable/disable this and having an app for other platforms.
- kyrra 5y ago
  Google Fi also has a VPN solution if you use them. Some ads are definitely as if I'm in another state. The weird one is shopping sites (like Home Depot) try to guess my closest store and they are always wildly off. It's sorta funny.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The weirder thing is that even after I login, Home Depot (and Best Buy and Staples) show me the wrong preferred store. I already saved what store I want, plus I have my home address saved (and it is the only address), yet they cannot remember or figure out my preferred store. And they have my purchase history for where I have already purchased things a million times, in recent history. What is all this data good for?
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      One explanation is that the ads/marketing is managed by a completely different "silo" in the business than the website itself. It may even be outsourced to a separate company. When it comes to ads/marketing, it is good enough to make others believe they are driving sales/conversions - whether it actually does is irrelevant as long as everyone believes it does and keeps pouring money into it.
    - dcow 5y ago
      God this is so annoying. I had chalked it up to bad big-box software engineering software but now I realize it’s private relay. Hmm…
  - jvolkman 5y ago
    Also Google One, which doesn't require using Fi. https://one.google.com/about/vpn https://one.google.com/about/vpn
can16358p 5y ago
It used to work great last year, then all of a sudden it stopped working due to "regional laws", killing the whole purpose of it. I don't get it as VPNs or proxies aren't illegal where I live, how is Apple's private relay not available?
- wonderbore 5y ago
  Probably whoever is responsible for it doesn’t really want to put up a fight. VPNs are always kind of in a gray area which many small companies could deal with (or say f it) but Apple can’t or doesn’t find it to be worth the fight. VPS are a digital product while Apple has physical stores or resellers of physical products in these countries. It’s not as easy.
88840-8855 5y ago
I am blocking ads via my router DNS. When using Private Relay I see the ads again, which is makes using apps very annoying. Plus, I dont see any benefit of hiding my network traffic here in Germany, tbh.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  The DNS issue is intentional. Trackers have collected information about people using VPNs before by generating unique domain lookups for a visit and watching where the DNS query originates from. Theoretically, editing your hosts file might provide the same filters even with Apple's pseudo-TOR enabled if the system respects user preferences. That might be a challenge on iOS, though.
- bowsamic 5y ago
  One reason that might not affect you is that piracy is heavily prosecuted in Germany
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    This is limited to Safari though, so completely useless for piracy.
    - bowsamic 5y ago
      No, a lot of online streaming sites started using BitTorrent in the background to stream the video, and a lot of people got fined in Germany because of this
      - 88840-8855 5y ago
        can you kindly share the source?
        bowsamic 5y ago
        No? A lot of anime sites. Google it
plg 5y ago
It may not work perfectly for all people in all use cases, yet ... but I have to say I appreciate and admire Apple's initiative and the values that this approach reflects. They didn't have to do this. It's not obvious that it immediately helps their bottom line. It does seem like the right thing to do for individual privacy. I appreciate that and it contributes to my overall respect for the company and its approach.
- ricw 5y ago
  It does have an immediate positive effect. People will likely switch to apple and trust it more. This means more service revenue, long term lock in and ultimately more profits. Im moving my to-be-paid-for personal google apps accounts over to iCloud for one. It’s not just a principled approach. Though it just makes sense. Thank god apple has minimal ad income only. Otherwise this wouldn’t happen.
  - bowsamic 5y ago
    The ad thing is why I stick with apple. I just feel much more comfortable paying for software and hardware that isn’t ad supported. I feel like I’m buying a product rather than being the product
    - lapcat 5y ago
      But Apple is ad supported: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-shaking-up-services-business-in-streaming-advertising-push-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-shaking-up-services-bu...
      - bowsamic 5y ago
        Nowhere near to the degree of almost any other tech company I can think of
        lapcat 5y ago
        True, but it's depressing that Apple has decided to go down that path. They've gone from $0 ad revenue to $billions and are obviously intent on increasing that revenue even more.
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
Turn it off and use Mulvad
- sysadm1n 5y ago
  Came here to say that. Using a VPN combined with Private Relay is overkill and adds latency too.
  - ec109685 5y ago
    It doesn’t work as well. Apple disables private relay when it detects a vpn enabled.
- hestefisk 5y ago
  The thing is… if you already pay for iCloud storage, this is thrown in for free. Plus it doesn’t feel like it’s via a VPN when using my 1Gbps fibre in Singapore. On Mulvad it does, unfortunately.
SalimoS 5y ago
I don’t have a Facebook account but sometimes I got an fb link for a public meme or a video and for the past month it’s been 50/50 (seeing the resource or getting blocked by Ip)
- HomeGear 5y ago
  It’s fully blocked from commenting on 4chan too.
nceqs3 5y ago
Private Relay is a fantastic feature, definitely one of the better ones Apple has rolled out over the past couple years.
Bluecobra 5y ago
One thing that is pretty cool is that it will proxy a IPv4 connection to IPv6. I was surprised to see a IPv6 address when I searched for “what is my ip” in Google.
marricks 5y ago
It’s important to note you actually have a choice to use Apple products or not, or even use this relay or another. In many places in the US you have barely any choices for your ISP which could be tracking you and selling your data. This is great in that it gives everyday folks a stupid-simple protection from ISP and mobile service providers. And yes, of course Apple did it as another reason to sell next tier iCloud service and gain good will of folks, which I think is a much better trade off then ISPs and Sprint/Verizon/etc knowing your full browser history.
tempfs 5y ago
Just remember that now instead of your ISP knowing every site you visit, Apple now will. So where as in the olden days, in order to figure out who you were, some actor had to buy logs from the destination sites and from the ISPs, then correlate. Now they can just buy the information from Apple. How convenient for Apple. I know Apple says they will only share your information with trusted partners and only with your consent which is implicit when you use private relay. No one ever asks who these partners are though. Probably the same people that used to buy your data from the destination sites and ISPs...
- jtsiskin 5y ago
  …did you read the article?
  - tempfs 5y ago
    Have you read Apple's privacy policy?
- dagmx 5y ago
  The article specifically mentions that the Apple relay wouldn't see the DNS, whereas the second relay doesn't see your IP. Secondly, Apple makes the OS. If they wanted to spy on you, they could have done so in much easier ways already.
- gr2020 5y ago
  This is the point - Apple doesn't have that information either. From the article, in the "How Private Relay works" section: > when you browse the web in Safari, no single party — not even Apple — can see both who you are and what sites you're visiting.
- baby-yoda 5y ago
  agree - apple says they're doing this for "privacy" but there is no way to verify they are not tracking/storing this data themselves. in todays world its simply too valuable and apples tentacles are far too reaching for the data to be thrown out. in fact, there are reports of an increased advertising push already [0]. id wager there is an internal team analyzing this data for predictive trends across all their product lines, akin to facebook using onavo data to target and value whatsapp relative to messenger. it could be used to guide which new streaming series candidate gets more funding/marketing, popular colors for new iPhones, price elasticity across the range, etc. and of course the surveillance aspect always looms in the background. [0] - https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/09/apple-services-push-streaming-advertising/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/09/apple-services-push-str...
baby-yoda 5y ago
is it possible to DIY something like this, and is it worth the hassle? my thought was 2 VPS and use Wireguard multihop. VPS 0 connected from my home router, VPS 1 connected to VPS 0 via private networking (ideally in a different geo location). recycle VPS 1 IP/location periodically. VPN from mobile to home router and get the benefits on the go, with dnsmasq blocking ad hosts in VPS 1 so tracking crap ideally doesn't make it over the wire. thoughts?
- DerekBickerton 5y ago
  I have a VPN travel router with a Mullvad .OVPN profile added. This 'VPN-ifies' all my traffic. Then I have a VPN app I use on my device from another VPN provider (ProtonVPN). This is chaining two distinct VPN providers on top of each other, a form of onion routing. Does it make me 'more' private? Hardly, but it's a good first step.
- gruez 5y ago
  But with your setup, the 2 VPS are still traceable to you (ie. via payment information). You can go through some extra effort to avoid this (eg. buying the VPS over tor and paying using crypto), but I'm guessing you're not currently doing this. Moreover, the 2 VPS are still carrying only your traffic, which makes logging/correlation attacks easier. With apple's solution, your traffic is mixed with others, and the second hop has no idea who you are.
rollcat 5y ago
Beware of using private relay with Apple Mail (at least on macOS). You currently can't both use private relay AND disable automatic remote content loading, so looking at a spam message will immediately load all pictures, and you will be spammed to oblivion. The spammer won't know your IP but that's little comfort, you're now a top spot on their list.
- iancarroll 5y ago
  At least on iOS, Mail Privacy Protection is designed to load all resources immediately upon receiving the email, not when viewing it. Maybe this still indicates the email is valid to a spammer, but it wouldn’t show that you opened it (unlike i.e. Gmail’s image proxy, which only loads upon viewing.) https://www.litmus.com/blog/apple-mail-privacy-protection-for-marketers/ https://www.litmus.com/blog/apple-mail-privacy-protection-fo...
- g_p 5y ago
  You should be able to do this (although not immediately obvious) by: - Opening Mail, Preferences, and going to the Privacy tab. - Unchecking "protect mail activity" - Checking "hide IP address" - Checking "block all remote content" Now you have automatic remote content loading disabled, and have private relay enabled. You would need to test this with a "friendly" bit of remote content to be certain, but it seems to work. When doing this, also ensure you have limit IP tracking enabled on your ethernet or wifi network, as that appears to override this setting (based on the help content which is available in this tab).
Yeri 5y ago
iCloud private relay currently has at least 2 providers (Cloudflare and Akamai); there may be more in other regions. Cloudflare has a good blog post about this: https://blog.cloudflare.com/icloud-private-relay/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/icloud-private-relay/
- barathr 5y ago
  Fastly as well -- Fastly, Cloudflare, and Akamai are the three egress providers.
aborsy 5y ago
Good feature, although a bit slow for me in a major metro.
FunnyBadger 5y ago
It doesn't work with VPN apparently (that's what it told me when I tried). That's not going to cut it for me. There are other ways that don't have that restriction.
midislack 5y ago
Various sites are punishing me for using this. Amazon and eBay both seem to massively dislike it and demand I click an email link.
SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
Two interesting side effects, if I understand correctly: 1. Dramatically reduces the number of entities the government needs to "partner" with (via NSLs and/or TAO) for the firehose of domains visited by Apple users. 2. Apple gets a time series of Safari network traffic for each user I wonder how many popular domains could be unmasked by an ISP that is supposedly blind to the destination of each packet but can of course still see fine-grained traffic patterns for each user.
- olliej 5y ago
  (1) Private Relay encrypts the request, so the host that can identify the client cannot read the request. The host that can decrypt the request cannot identify the client. So without making a total change to how it works it's not it by design cannot be used for surveillance. (2) Again, by design Apple cannot see what is being requested, so no it doesn't get a time series of safari traffic. If that were a real concern that you had, then recall the Apple could just have Safari report those directly, without having to have any VPN-type insanity. The text that is important is, it would seem very hard for Apple to say this is if was not true: "This information could be used to determine your identity and build a profile of your location and browsing history over time. iCloud Private Relay is designed to protect your privacy by ensuring that when you browse the web in Safari, no single party—not even Apple—can see both who you are and what sites you're visiting."
stereoradonc 5y ago
This is about centralisation of user data through Apple's servers under the garb of "privacy". When will the HN community wake up and start calling Apple for what it is?
- kaba0 4y ago
  When will HN users learn to not write overly confident “facts” when they are not, in fact, knowledgeable enough on the topic?

129 points by andrewstuart 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Only works with Safari on macOS, which means I’ll never use it there. And I wound up turning it off on iOS because it made my life more annoying - go into the subway and try to connect to the free MTA WiFi? Alert! Your browsing is unprotected. …plus I found I would sporadically get connection issues that I resolved by turning it off. It’s a bummer because I would like to use it, and it being bundled with iCloud is nice.

currysausage 5y ago
No Google suggestions for me in iOS Safari when using Private Relay.
dijit 5y ago
> go into the subway and try to connect to the free MTA WiFi? Alert! Your browsing is unprotected. I haven't used it myself, but it seems reasonable to inform laymen that browsing to a captive portal system will be unprotected. I'm not sure how eggregious the error actually is. > …plus I found I would sporadically get connection issues that I resolved by turning it off. Not defending Apple in particular, but connectivity will decrease with every extra hop you make in your connection; you'll notice this when browsing the internet with tor (or, heaven forbid trying to use IRC over tor). it makes sense that you would have more connectivity issues when using any kind of proxy; and it would get worse with every extra layer of proxy.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  Not sure what “connectivity will decrease” means in practice, but I’d see problems like pages refusing to load over multiple refreshes, texts not sending, or iCloud data (messages, photos, etc) simply not updating until I switched the service off. I’m not as convinced as you that these problems are inherent to the service, and I’m holding out hope for what Private Relay looks like when it emerges from beta. > I'm not sure how eggregious the error actually is Not egregious - annoying. Unusual for Apple. I don’t want to use a service that spits alerts at me as I walk around the city.
ec109685 5y ago
The connection issues don’t happen anymore. It was annoying before where things would just hang and then turning off and on would fix it. I haven’t seen that in months, so they must have fixed the issue.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  Nice! I'll give it another shot.

maxpert 5y ago

I love it! Using this I’ve seen FB/Google having less and less information about my exact location. Seeing less relevant ads is assuring and relieving! The only wish I have is a more fluent way to enable/disable this and having an app for other platforms.

kyrra 5y ago
Google Fi also has a VPN solution if you use them. Some ads are definitely as if I'm in another state. The weird one is shopping sites (like Home Depot) try to guess my closest store and they are always wildly off. It's sorta funny.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The weirder thing is that even after I login, Home Depot (and Best Buy and Staples) show me the wrong preferred store. I already saved what store I want, plus I have my home address saved (and it is the only address), yet they cannot remember or figure out my preferred store. And they have my purchase history for where I have already purchased things a million times, in recent history. What is all this data good for?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    One explanation is that the ads/marketing is managed by a completely different "silo" in the business than the website itself. It may even be outsourced to a separate company. When it comes to ads/marketing, it is good enough to make others believe they are driving sales/conversions - whether it actually does is irrelevant as long as everyone believes it does and keeps pouring money into it.
  - dcow 5y ago
    God this is so annoying. I had chalked it up to bad big-box software engineering software but now I realize it’s private relay. Hmm…
- jvolkman 5y ago
  Also Google One, which doesn't require using Fi. https://one.google.com/about/vpn https://one.google.com/about/vpn

can16358p 5y ago

It used to work great last year, then all of a sudden it stopped working due to "regional laws", killing the whole purpose of it. I don't get it as VPNs or proxies aren't illegal where I live, how is Apple's private relay not available?

wonderbore 5y ago
Probably whoever is responsible for it doesn’t really want to put up a fight. VPNs are always kind of in a gray area which many small companies could deal with (or say f it) but Apple can’t or doesn’t find it to be worth the fight. VPS are a digital product while Apple has physical stores or resellers of physical products in these countries. It’s not as easy.

88840-8855 5y ago

I am blocking ads via my router DNS. When using Private Relay I see the ads again, which is makes using apps very annoying. Plus, I dont see any benefit of hiding my network traffic here in Germany, tbh.

jeroenhd 5y ago
The DNS issue is intentional. Trackers have collected information about people using VPNs before by generating unique domain lookups for a visit and watching where the DNS query originates from. Theoretically, editing your hosts file might provide the same filters even with Apple's pseudo-TOR enabled if the system respects user preferences. That might be a challenge on iOS, though.
bowsamic 5y ago
One reason that might not affect you is that piracy is heavily prosecuted in Germany
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  This is limited to Safari though, so completely useless for piracy.
  - bowsamic 5y ago
    No, a lot of online streaming sites started using BitTorrent in the background to stream the video, and a lot of people got fined in Germany because of this
    - 88840-8855 5y ago
      can you kindly share the source?
      - bowsamic 5y ago
        No? A lot of anime sites. Google it

plg 5y ago

It may not work perfectly for all people in all use cases, yet ... but I have to say I appreciate and admire Apple's initiative and the values that this approach reflects. They didn't have to do this. It's not obvious that it immediately helps their bottom line. It does seem like the right thing to do for individual privacy. I appreciate that and it contributes to my overall respect for the company and its approach.

ricw 5y ago
It does have an immediate positive effect. People will likely switch to apple and trust it more. This means more service revenue, long term lock in and ultimately more profits. Im moving my to-be-paid-for personal google apps accounts over to iCloud for one. It’s not just a principled approach. Though it just makes sense. Thank god apple has minimal ad income only. Otherwise this wouldn’t happen.
- bowsamic 5y ago
  The ad thing is why I stick with apple. I just feel much more comfortable paying for software and hardware that isn’t ad supported. I feel like I’m buying a product rather than being the product
  - lapcat 5y ago
    But Apple is ad supported: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-shaking-up-services-business-in-streaming-advertising-push-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-shaking-up-services-bu...
    - bowsamic 5y ago
      Nowhere near to the degree of almost any other tech company I can think of
      - lapcat 5y ago
        True, but it's depressing that Apple has decided to go down that path. They've gone from $0 ad revenue to $billions and are obviously intent on increasing that revenue even more.

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

Turn it off and use Mulvad

sysadm1n 5y ago
Came here to say that. Using a VPN combined with Private Relay is overkill and adds latency too.
- ec109685 5y ago
  It doesn’t work as well. Apple disables private relay when it detects a vpn enabled.
hestefisk 5y ago
The thing is… if you already pay for iCloud storage, this is thrown in for free. Plus it doesn’t feel like it’s via a VPN when using my 1Gbps fibre in Singapore. On Mulvad it does, unfortunately.

SalimoS 5y ago

I don’t have a Facebook account but sometimes I got an fb link for a public meme or a video and for the past month it’s been 50/50 (seeing the resource or getting blocked by Ip)

HomeGear 5y ago
It’s fully blocked from commenting on 4chan too.

nceqs3 5y ago

Private Relay is a fantastic feature, definitely one of the better ones Apple has rolled out over the past couple years.

Bluecobra 5y ago

One thing that is pretty cool is that it will proxy a IPv4 connection to IPv6. I was surprised to see a IPv6 address when I searched for “what is my ip” in Google.

marricks 5y ago

It’s important to note you actually have a choice to use Apple products or not, or even use this relay or another. In many places in the US you have barely any choices for your ISP which could be tracking you and selling your data. This is great in that it gives everyday folks a stupid-simple protection from ISP and mobile service providers. And yes, of course Apple did it as another reason to sell next tier iCloud service and gain good will of folks, which I think is a much better trade off then ISPs and Sprint/Verizon/etc knowing your full browser history.

tempfs 5y ago

Just remember that now instead of your ISP knowing every site you visit, Apple now will. So where as in the olden days, in order to figure out who you were, some actor had to buy logs from the destination sites and from the ISPs, then correlate. Now they can just buy the information from Apple. How convenient for Apple. I know Apple says they will only share your information with trusted partners and only with your consent which is implicit when you use private relay. No one ever asks who these partners are though. Probably the same people that used to buy your data from the destination sites and ISPs...

jtsiskin 5y ago
…did you read the article?
- tempfs 5y ago
  Have you read Apple's privacy policy?
dagmx 5y ago
The article specifically mentions that the Apple relay wouldn't see the DNS, whereas the second relay doesn't see your IP. Secondly, Apple makes the OS. If they wanted to spy on you, they could have done so in much easier ways already.
gr2020 5y ago
This is the point - Apple doesn't have that information either. From the article, in the "How Private Relay works" section: > when you browse the web in Safari, no single party — not even Apple — can see both who you are and what sites you're visiting.
baby-yoda 5y ago
agree - apple says they're doing this for "privacy" but there is no way to verify they are not tracking/storing this data themselves. in todays world its simply too valuable and apples tentacles are far too reaching for the data to be thrown out. in fact, there are reports of an increased advertising push already [0]. id wager there is an internal team analyzing this data for predictive trends across all their product lines, akin to facebook using onavo data to target and value whatsapp relative to messenger. it could be used to guide which new streaming series candidate gets more funding/marketing, popular colors for new iPhones, price elasticity across the range, etc. and of course the surveillance aspect always looms in the background. [0] - https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/09/apple-services-push-streaming-advertising/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/09/apple-services-push-str...

baby-yoda 5y ago

is it possible to DIY something like this, and is it worth the hassle? my thought was 2 VPS and use Wireguard multihop. VPS 0 connected from my home router, VPS 1 connected to VPS 0 via private networking (ideally in a different geo location). recycle VPS 1 IP/location periodically. VPN from mobile to home router and get the benefits on the go, with dnsmasq blocking ad hosts in VPS 1 so tracking crap ideally doesn't make it over the wire. thoughts?

DerekBickerton 5y ago
I have a VPN travel router with a Mullvad .OVPN profile added. This 'VPN-ifies' all my traffic. Then I have a VPN app I use on my device from another VPN provider (ProtonVPN). This is chaining two distinct VPN providers on top of each other, a form of onion routing. Does it make me 'more' private? Hardly, but it's a good first step.
gruez 5y ago
But with your setup, the 2 VPS are still traceable to you (ie. via payment information). You can go through some extra effort to avoid this (eg. buying the VPS over tor and paying using crypto), but I'm guessing you're not currently doing this. Moreover, the 2 VPS are still carrying only your traffic, which makes logging/correlation attacks easier. With apple's solution, your traffic is mixed with others, and the second hop has no idea who you are.

rollcat 5y ago

Beware of using private relay with Apple Mail (at least on macOS). You currently can't both use private relay AND disable automatic remote content loading, so looking at a spam message will immediately load all pictures, and you will be spammed to oblivion. The spammer won't know your IP but that's little comfort, you're now a top spot on their list.

iancarroll 5y ago
At least on iOS, Mail Privacy Protection is designed to load all resources immediately upon receiving the email, not when viewing it. Maybe this still indicates the email is valid to a spammer, but it wouldn’t show that you opened it (unlike i.e. Gmail’s image proxy, which only loads upon viewing.) https://www.litmus.com/blog/apple-mail-privacy-protection-for-marketers/ https://www.litmus.com/blog/apple-mail-privacy-protection-fo...
g_p 5y ago
You should be able to do this (although not immediately obvious) by: - Opening Mail, Preferences, and going to the Privacy tab. - Unchecking "protect mail activity" - Checking "hide IP address" - Checking "block all remote content" Now you have automatic remote content loading disabled, and have private relay enabled. You would need to test this with a "friendly" bit of remote content to be certain, but it seems to work. When doing this, also ensure you have limit IP tracking enabled on your ethernet or wifi network, as that appears to override this setting (based on the help content which is available in this tab).

Yeri 5y ago

iCloud private relay currently has at least 2 providers (Cloudflare and Akamai); there may be more in other regions. Cloudflare has a good blog post about this: https://blog.cloudflare.com/icloud-private-relay/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/icloud-private-relay/

barathr 5y ago
Fastly as well -- Fastly, Cloudflare, and Akamai are the three egress providers.

aborsy 5y ago

Good feature, although a bit slow for me in a major metro.

FunnyBadger 5y ago

It doesn't work with VPN apparently (that's what it told me when I tried). That's not going to cut it for me. There are other ways that don't have that restriction.

midislack 5y ago

Various sites are punishing me for using this. Amazon and eBay both seem to massively dislike it and demand I click an email link.

SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago

Two interesting side effects, if I understand correctly: 1. Dramatically reduces the number of entities the government needs to "partner" with (via NSLs and/or TAO) for the firehose of domains visited by Apple users. 2. Apple gets a time series of Safari network traffic for each user I wonder how many popular domains could be unmasked by an ISP that is supposedly blind to the destination of each packet but can of course still see fine-grained traffic patterns for each user.

olliej 5y ago
(1) Private Relay encrypts the request, so the host that can identify the client cannot read the request. The host that can decrypt the request cannot identify the client. So without making a total change to how it works it's not it by design cannot be used for surveillance. (2) Again, by design Apple cannot see what is being requested, so no it doesn't get a time series of safari traffic. If that were a real concern that you had, then recall the Apple could just have Safari report those directly, without having to have any VPN-type insanity. The text that is important is, it would seem very hard for Apple to say this is if was not true: "This information could be used to determine your identity and build a profile of your location and browsing history over time. iCloud Private Relay is designed to protect your privacy by ensuring that when you browse the web in Safari, no single party—not even Apple—can see both who you are and what sites you're visiting."

stereoradonc 5y ago

This is about centralisation of user data through Apple's servers under the garb of "privacy". When will the HN community wake up and start calling Apple for what it is?

kaba0 4y ago
When will HN users learn to not write overly confident “facts” when they are not, in fact, knowledgeable enough on the topic?