Apple Fixes iCloud Private Relay After Extended Outage

[MacRumors]

Apple has resolved the iCloud Private Relay service outage, restoring full functionality for users around the world after several days of disruption.

The recent iCloud Private Relay outage began at 02:34 AM Eastern Time on Thursday and lasted until 10:59 PM Eastern Time on Saturday. The issue disrupted web browsing for some users for over 48 hours, which is an unusually long period for an Apple service outage. The problem was confirmed by Apple through its System Status webpage, where it noted that the service might have been slow or unavailable.

iCloud Private Relay is a feature available to iCloud+ subscribers, designed to enhance privacy by encrypting browsing data and routing it through two separate relay servers. One of these servers is operated by Apple, while the other is managed by a third party. This setup ensures that neither Apple, internet service providers, nor the websites visited can access users' true browsing information. The service's dual-relay mechanism helps maintain a high level of privacy by separating the user's IP address from their DNS queries, which further obscures the user's online activity.

Users who had disabled iCloud Private Relay to mitigate browsing issues can now go ahead and re-enable the feature to continue utilizing its privacy benefits.

Article Link: Apple Fixes iCloud Private Relay After Extended Outage

 

[NapZzz]

Anyway, iCloud‌ Private Relay is still banned in China mainland.

 

[SoldOnApple]

is this why Google doesn't load sometimes, like all year not just recently?

 

[nono_thank you]

is this why Google doesn't load sometimes, like all year not just recently?

I think you just answered your own question?

 

[Tobiruiz]

Mine is still unavailable.

 

[CyberGene]

I keep getting the notifications about Private Relay becoming unavailable. Just got one.

 

[tribaltek]

Still unavailable on my iPhone. Have powered the phone off/on, turned private relay off/on. Still getting unavailable.

 

[Chungry]

Behold the power of Apple’s stellar services offering. Maybe they can also start locking iCloud accounts again for unknown reasons

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I disabled it a few weeks ago; it's never been reliable for me. Sometimes when enabled, sites would time out, sometimes they wouldn't. Who knows?

 

[guitarman777]

Interesting. I've been having download speed issues related to Private Relay for a few weeks now. Was reducing my download speeds by literally 90%. I'm wondering now if that was a precursor to the bigger issue that occurred.

 

[CarAnalogy]

I don’t suppose they’ll ever say why.

I’m also not sure I see the point in leaving this feature on all the time. It’s adding another point of failure for not a lot of benefit. Most people go to the same sites over and over that know all about them already. They’re already tracked by more than IP address.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Glad it has been fixed.

 

[ppetrovic]

There's no easy way for me to confirm this but it looks like it's still flapping every now and then. Quite frustrating.

It's always baffled me how one of the largest technology companies on the planet, with one of the largest market caps cannot fix their Services division for years, even decades on end. Is it an issue of internal company culture? Internal company politics among upper management? It's amazing how the company manages to produce great products across so many verticals that work very good overall, with generally great user experience, but the moment you throw in a TCP/IP layer between those products and the rest of the world, all of a sudden there are network flaps, sync issues, slow uploads to iCloud and a whole cornucopia of other issues...

Get your act together, Apple. We know you can.

 

[SoldOnApple]

I guess it's been failing a bit for a while. But I still like to use it. It really works. The more people use it, the more websites that block it will be forced to adapt. When I hit a website that obviously isn't configured for it or actively doesn't even load, I just go back and find a different website instead.

 

[ndouglas]

I have the same experience as the above posts. What seems most odd and unnecessary is why the constant popups? When it’s working and when it’s on the fritz. Just protect users by default, please and thank you!

 

[nt5672]

With no transparency it is hard to trust Apple services like this.

Apple is no longer the "it just works" company, instead they have become the "we only spend money if the user can conclusively prove beyond a shadow of doubt that a bug exists and we are in a good mood that day" company.

 

[ThankYouRob]

I disabled it a few weeks ago; it's never been reliable for me. Sometimes when enabled, sites would time out, sometimes they wouldn't. Who knows?

I have this same exact problem. I haven't fully disabled it yet though, just deal with issues from time to time - where I just temporarily disable it for the day.

 

[PhoenixAnhart]

Apple just isn't good with online services imo. iCloud Drive for instance still freezes randomly, also keeping iCloud disabled for Books was a very annoying ordeal I had to work out lately.

 

[tmjdisorder]

I never got a message on my phone saying that private relay was unavailable, I just couldn't go to any websites on Safari.

 

[minik]

I was on my devices during that time and didn't even know there's an outage.

 

[falkayn39]

As of Monday, 7/29/2024 11:00 am ET, I'm still getting iCloud Private Relay outage messages on all of my devices... even though Apple System services page is showing resolved as of 7/27/2024 @ 10.59 PM.

 

[klasma]

It's always baffled me how one of the largest technology companies on the planet, with one of the largest market caps cannot fix their Services division for years, even decades on end. Is it an issue of internal company culture? Internal company politics among upper management? It's amazing how the company manages to produce great products across so many verticals that work very good overall, with generally great user experience, but the moment you throw in a TCP/IP layer between those products and the rest of the world, all of a sudden there are network flaps, sync issues, slow uploads to iCloud and a whole cornucopia of other issues...

Get your act together, Apple. We know you can.

My guess is that they are not getting the right talent, because anyone competent and interested in designing and maintaining cloud infrastructure, and at the same time not even more interested in other roles at Apple, probably doesn’t have Apple very high on their list.

 

[BigBrotherNowWatching]

Not fixed at all.

The Load Balancers are checked, they are still working on Proxies, Fallback Logic and Booster.

But they are learning a lot these days 🫡

 

[lkrupp]

With no transparency it is hard to trust Apple services like this.

Apple is no longer the "it just works" company, instead they have become the "we only spend money if the user can conclusively prove beyond a shadow of doubt that a bug exists and we are in a good mood that day" company.

So try another company if that’s what you think of Apple now. Why are you still on the platform?

 

[addamas]

Time to turn it back manually