It costs apple quite a bit of money to provide private relay. By definition, they need third parties to process and forward packets, which is an ongoing and continuing expense for them that continues as long as you own and use the device. Apple has to pay for that. That money is going to come from somewhere. If you don’t want it as part of the icloud plan, it will be a separate fee, or they’ll raise the price of the devices.
What I want is a total transparency about how they handle all this privacy stuff. Judging by all their “mistakes” in the past on this front I don’t believe a word they say. If they could provide this I would believe them a bit. But until they do I consider this just a cash cow.
Then there would be no more iphones in russia, and there’d be no private relay in that case anyway?
www.theverge.com
Well, as far as I know, Apple said it’s independent third party/parties? handling the 2nd stage proxies. If both first and second stage is under Apple’s control, then what they claim is not true and they expose themselves to lawsuits. I believe Apple is paying for the services of the 2nd stage proxy and in turn monetizing it via iCloud+. They have no control of the 2nd stage proxies.
Sound similar to Apple Private Relay doesn’t it?
Not sure what is a no log VPN. Once you use a VPN service, they have the ability to know your Internet habits, because that’s the nature of a network. But if you feel ‘safe’ with the marketing of said service, I guess it give you peace of mind, so go for it.
Yes. Yes it does. Plus your data sits on admittedly secure storage platforms spread across multiple data centres that who knows how many people have access too.
You’re right; that would likely be the outcome. I was referencing their response to the question of repressive governments telling them to add non-CSAM-related image hashes to the CSAM-hash database: Apple claimed that they would simply refuse to do so. This iCloud Relay situation is just one of several examples of Apple bending to such regimes, so the point of my post was that Apple’s “refusal” statement regarding the CSAM database was insincere or, at best, simple-minded.
That’s speculation and fear mongering. Google has been scanning in the cloud for years. Have they been forced to scan by “every government”?
In that case, I don’t think you should use their devices or services. I wouldn’t.
No. No it doesn’t. Not necessarily. Welcome to encryption is a thing.
They don’t have to handle it, all they need is access to log files. Just because your data is anonymized, doesn’t meant it can’t be connected. I’ve worked on projects in the medical field where it was easily possible to connect fully anonymizes patient information simply based on symptoms and behavior to make connections.
With the exception of where and how the egress servers are hosted. That opens up another can of worms. I doubt Russia and a few others will be the minority here when it comes to Private Relay. In the end, it will probably be a major US only thing. With international projects, data hosting of any type on US servers is usually a big no-go. So we’ll have to wait and see if Apple is forced to change egress servers by market.
As the name suggests, it’s a VPN where absolutely no logs are written. So unless someone is sitting at a monitor, who’s using the VPN can not be said after it actually happened. Sure, while you’re using it, people can tell “who” you are. 2 seconds later, that information is gone. That’s why no log VPNs are so popular for legal (privacy concern) and illegal activities. You pay anonymously, say Bitcoin, can use the service, make a few additional hops around the world and unless someone is actively tracking you, you’re off the hook.
No, your connection and storage on iCloud server is encrypted. That doesn’t mean it’s 100% safe, nothing is. The usual rules apply. If you don’t trust the type of encryption used here, then your better not shop at Amazon or use gift cards at all, it’s equally safe.
False. iMessage is encrypted and it's even end-to-end encrypted in transit. If you upload your iMessages to iCloud however, Apple holds the encryption keys but they do not store it in plain text. To even suggest something like that would mean that Apple sucks at privacy.
Exactly. Pretty much everything is encrypted these days and you are considered a very low quality company if you do not offer default encryption like HTTPS. And yes, VPNs just encrypt everything again and sends it through their servers and can then let you send your traffic from any place in the world where they have servers. VPNs also obfuscate your IP adress so that you are much harder to track. Or rather, they provide an anonymous IP. Nonetheless, you are only as secure as the VPN provider you use. Make sure they are a non-logging, third-party audited and transparent one if you use a VPN.
Not true, it's all encrypted and the master keys to that encryption are kept to very few people and they would have to have very good reason (read: warrant) to decrypt your data.
I would think it’s a lot easier to harvest such details on device if Apple is so desperate for it. I’ll give Apple the benefit of the doubt that they are really pushing this as a privacy feature, like Tor, because it makes for good business.
Ingress/egress really only make sense when discussing router/switches. Both first stage and second stage proxies of App,e’s Private Relay have ingress and egress. As I’ve said earlier, the user experience will be bad if the proxies are centrally located, and will run afoul with countries’ laws where Internet traffic cannot leave the country without filters.
I dunno. You seem dead set on Apple willing to harvest users data, but you believe that no logs are captured by the VPN providers because of what they claimed. What I know is that when law enforcements knocks on the door of these no log VPN providers, I would believe that they will have logs to provide. Besides, like you said, logs can be collected from many sources and ultimately pin-point it back to you with big-data analysis.
In short, private relay will not be available in any country where it’s actually needed. Because it’s nothing more than a gimmick.
Alongside iOS 15, Apple introduced an iCloud+ service that adds new features to its paid iCloud plans. One of these features is iCloud Private Relay, which is designed to encrypt all of the traffic leaving your device so no one can intercept it or read it.
According to Apple, "regulatory reasons" prevent the company from launching Private Relay in China, Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the Philippines.
Apple mentioned these country limitations in June, but it seems that Private Relay will not be available in Russia either, after Apple apparently disabled the feature there over the last day or so.
Based on reports from Twitter users and as reported by iPhones.ru, the feature was previously available to use in Russia via beta versions of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, but now when they try to enable it, those same users are met with the message "Private Relay is not supported in this region."
Private Relay works by sending web traffic to a server that is maintained by Apple to strip the IP address. Once IP info has been removed, Apple sends the traffic to a second server maintained by a third-party company that assigns a temporary IP address and then sends the traffic to its destination, a process that prevents your IP address, location, and browsing activity from being used to create a profile about you.
Involving an outside party in the relay system is an intentional move that Apple says was designed to prevent anyone, including Apple, from knowing a user's identity and the website the user is visiting.
Why Apple has apparently disabled Private Relay in Russia only recently isn't entirely clear, but the company has bowed to demands from the Russian authorities in the past, so there's good reason to presume this is down to another regulatory issue.
iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and tvOS 15 will be released on Monday, September 20.
Article Link: Apple Seemingly Adds Russia to List of Countries Where iCloud Private Relay Won't Be Available
