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Apple Seemingly Adds Russia to List of Countries Where iCloud Private Relay Won't Be Available

British expat living in Moscow with U.K. registered iPhone. Private relay is still working for me today so maybe the ban is only for Russian registered iPhones?
 

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According to Russian laws VPN services which could be used for bypassing access restrictions (government blocks of some websites) are prohibited. That's why Apple VPN (called iCloud Private Relay) cannot be available in Russia.
 
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danny842003 said:
By caving do you mean breaking the law? Are you advocating for private business to just do what they wish?
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In America laws get passed and companies and people violate them all the time because they feel the laws are wrong, it then heads to the courts to begin the arduous process of determining if the law is bad/unconstitutional…. Most democracies have similar systems in place. Companies who have operations in communist or dictator style government basically have two choices, comply or cease operations….. most comply…. This was the core of the backdoor Code argument people were making before Apple reversed course, because of things that happen like this vpn thing, it leaves little doubt Apple will comply…. Not just Apple though, it’s the price of doing business in these countries
 
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quarkysg said:
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.
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Have you ever seen law enforcement working together worldwide? I have not. I think chances that authorities are working together in the US, Romania, Panama, etc. are slim to none. I'm also pretty sure they don't log anything. We've seen plenty of effort from governments and authorities to shut down or obtain data from no log VPN providers, due to piracy (software/music/movies/tv), weapons deals, child pornography, etc.

You either have full privacy, but then open the door for illegal activity such as the above or you prevent illegal activity by sacrificing full privacy. You can't have both. What most people don't realise is we already give up full privacy when shopping on amazon or visit a doctor.
quarkysg said:
Well, I for one am not losing sleep over this.
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Neither am I, because I'm not going to use it.
 
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danny842003 said:
By caving do you mean breaking the law? Are you advocating for private business to just do what they wish?
Click to expand...
By offering products and services in an authoritarian country in the first place. I am advocating that Apple not chase very last rouble if it means having to comply with immoral laws.
 
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VulchR said:
By offering products and services in an authoritarian country in the first place. I am advocating that Apple not chase very last rouble if it means having to comply with immoral laws.
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I think people in other countries don’t quite get that we expect American companies to reflect our values no matter where they operate, that’s the main beef we have with Apple and others bending over to appease the Chinese and others. It’s also why many Americans, mostly on the right have been pushing an American first policy, globalization Has made us far too dependent causing not just appeasement by our corporations but by the U.S. government itself.
 
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I guess the same way it "bowed down" for other matters for the Israeli and USA governments.
It appears the bias of the media cannot help itself but focus on how "bad" other regimes are when their own is worst in some cases.
 
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visualseed said:
“Bowed to demands”

It’s interesting that many of the same people advocating legislation around the world to change how Apple conducts business, seem to also be the ones to suggest that Apple should ignore or resist laws in countries that they don’t like.

I’m all for being opposed to authoritative regimes and repressive laws, but foreign policy should not be left to corporations to enforce. This should remain the realm of governments and citizens should pressure them into legislating trade with countries that abuse human rights.
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You really worked hard here to absolve Apple of any sense of corporate responsibility, which is not the same as policy making. There’s no reason Apple couldn’t help legislatures by taking their own stand to show solidarity with actual democracies. Those democracies are also free to enforce applicable laws to protect markets from anticompetitive behavior. Apple is kowtowing to these governments for money, and it clearly contradicts their privacy first PR campaign.
 
Tech198 said:
hehe..

"Apple sends the traffic to a second server maintained by a third-party company"

Why does it have to be third party? can't Apple do it if they want privacy?
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Apple told you in your face they scan the files with CSAM , what privacy are they talking about?
 
fifatanathan said:
and also Thailand
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@fifatanathan, iCloud Private Relay is working for me here in Thailand. After the iOS/iPadOS upgrade this morning I got the message saying that it’s not available in Thailand, however, 2 hours ago I received a notification saying that it is now enabled. I went to an IP checker website and it shows CloudFlare as my ISP and my location as Hong Kong.

Edit #1
Nope, I take that back. It has gone back to disabled. However, it did work for some time. I guess it kind of enabled itself because my home wifi traffic is routed through a Singapore VPN. Interesting….I need to play around with this.

Edit #2
I can confirm that my iCloud Private Relay has reactivated itself on both my iPhone and iPad roughly 2 hours later.
The following conditions applied:

  1. both iPhone and iPad have remained in flight mode
  2. both devices are using a wireless connection that relays the traffic through Singapore (OpenVPN connection on router)
  3. both devices use a supported country region (not Thailand)
Next I will disable the underlying VPN connection to see what happens on the iPad (it’s a wifi-only iPad). At the same time, I will deactivate the flight mode on the iPhone and see if the Thailand mobile phone signal deactivates the private relay.

Edit #3
Yep, as soon as I deactivate the VPN connection routing my iPad traffic through a supported country, a few minutes later private relay is deactivated.
 
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SamboSoul said:
@fifatanathan, iCloud Private Relay is working for me here in Thailand. After the iOS/iPadOS upgrade this morning I got the message saying that it’s not available in Thailand, however, 2 hours ago I received a notification saying that it is now enabled. I went to an IP checker website and it shows CloudFlare as my ISP and my location as Hong Kong.

Edit #1
Nope, I take that back. It has gone back to disabled. However, it did work for some time. I guess it kind of enabled itself because my home wifi traffic is routed through a Singapore VPN. Interesting….I need to play around with this.

Edit #2
I can confirm that my iCloud Private Relay has reactivated itself on both my iPhone and iPad roughly 2 hours later.
The following conditions applied:

  1. both iPhone and iPad have remained in flight mode
  2. both devices are using a wireless connection that relays the traffic through Singapore (OpenVPN connection on router)
  3. both devices use a supported country region (not Thailand)
Next I will disable the underlying VPN connection to see what happens on the iPad (it’s a wifi-only iPad). At the same time, I will deactivate the flight mode on the iPhone and see if the Thailand mobile phone signal deactivates the private relay.

Edit #3
Yep, as soon as I deactivate the VPN connection routing my iPad traffic through a supported country, a few minutes later private relay is deactivated.
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Good to know there's a workaround. It seems Apple check supported/unsupported country from the ip address.
 
The data of Russian citizens must not be stored on the servers maintained by a third party outside Russia. This is a national security issue plain and simple.

There’s plenty of people who trash talk Russian government/Russia in general without any consequences. I guess if you lie about someone you can be charged with defamation but this is the universal rule applicable everywhere.
 
avz said:
The data of Russian citizens must not be stored on the servers maintained by a third party outside Russia. This is a national security issue plain and simple.

There’s plenty of people who trash talk Russian government/Russia in general without any consequences. I guess if you lie about someone you can be charged with defamation but this is the universal rule applicable everywhere.
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If you knew it was maintained by a third party outside Russia, it would not be a security issue..
why would one ever trashtalk the russian government? Maybe the universal rule is not applicable? Ask a critic if you could find one (alive).
 
Xtir said:
If you knew it was maintained by a third party outside Russia, it would not be a security issue..
Click to expand...

You mean it is not a problem when a personal data say of a law enforcement personnel maintained by a third party on a server outside of your country?
 
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