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I won the lottery! But iCloud Relay blocking

C

colinwil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 15, 2010
297
167
Reading, UK
I got an e-mail from the national lottery. Good news - you’ve won. So I went to the UK lottery web site.

The website blocked me, claiming I was outside the UK - which I’m not. So I turned off Private IP Address and Limit IP Address Tracking, and this time it let me in.

I only won £10 :(

But how come the lottery site thought I was outside the UK. I thought that the private relay thing made it appear that you are from your real country, and at approximately your location?

Has anyone else been blocked like this, or noticed any difference in iOS 15.3 vs previous versions?
 
That's interesting, I have had a couple of situations recently where logging into sites I always have, a message has come up saying an email was sent to verify I am who I say I am due to a location difference.

It may be just the IP address difference, still in the UK but not the usual geo location.
 
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LeeW said:
That's interesting, I have had a couple of situations recently where logging into sites I always have, a message has come up saying an email was sent to verify I am who I say I am due to a location difference.

It may be just the IP address difference, still in the UK but not the usual geo location.
Click to expand...
UK is a pretty small place. Maybe Apple's similar area is more in tune with places like the USA or Australia. Where it can be 500kms away but still in the same country. Maybe thought you were in Ireland or Scotland etc. Or even France? Interesting though.
 
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Or the website is not setup to handle iCloud Relay.

developer.apple.com

Prepare your network or web server for iCloud Private Relay - iCloud - Apple Developer

iCloud Private Relay is a new internet privacy service built into iCloud that allows users to connect to and browse the web more privately and securely.
developer.apple.com developer.apple.com

If you run a web server, you can localize your content or restrict access based on the region of a client. Please reach out to your geo IP database provider to update your feeds with the latest mappings. Many geo IP database providers also annotate these addresses as “iCloud Private Relay,” so you can easily recognize them on your servers.
Click to expand...
 
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iCloud Private Relay and Limit IP Address tracking are great in theory but I've found that they impact both the speed of your connection and in some instances, similarly to the one you have had, they can stop certain websites. I've turned it all off and opted to use a VPN when I need to go anon.
 
LeeW said:
That's interesting, I have had a couple of situations recently where logging into sites I always have, a message has come up saying an email was sent to verify I am who I say I am due to a location difference.

It may be just the IP address difference, still in the UK but not the usual geo location.
Click to expand...
That is not uncommon. The reason is that when using the icloud relay, or a VPN in comparison, you are making your activity appear to come from a shared server. Now, when one website gets a lot of traffic from many devices claiming to be one entity(which is how this stuff works), the web server freaks out and puts a block in place to prevent distributed attacks. I get that on some websites even when connecting to my employer's corporate VPN network.
 
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smoking monkey said:
UK is a pretty small place. Maybe Apple's similar area is more in tune with places like the USA or Australia. Where it can be 500kms away but still in the same country. Maybe thought you were in Ireland or Scotland etc. Or even France? Interesting though.
Click to expand...

that does not make much sense. It is checking the IP and if the IP is in the range of country XY, then it does not matter how big a country is "physically" speaking
 
iCloud Private Relay is still in beta I think. I remember an article from its launch that mentioned that, during the beta period, geolocation may not work as expected.

When I enable it, my location is given as northern Scotland - not far from Aberdeen. I'm actually in England. That shouldn't prevent the National Lottery website from working, although they could be using a different geolocation database.

If you go into your iCloud settings, Private Relay, you have the option to 'Maintain general location' or 'Use country and time zone.' When I switched over the latter, my location was then given as London. I'm closer to London than Aberdeen but still a considerable distance away. Perhaps you'd have better luck with that setting.
 
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I have the same issue here in Canada. iCloud Relay always caused issues with the lottery site
 
colinwil said:
I got an e-mail from the national lottery. Good news - you’ve won. So I went to the UK lottery web site.

The website blocked me, claiming I was outside the UK - which I’m not. So I turned off Private IP Address and Limit IP Address Tracking, and this time it let me in.

I only won £10 :(

But how come the lottery site thought I was outside the UK. I thought that the private relay thing made it appear that you are from your real country, and at approximately your location?

Has anyone else been blocked like this, or noticed any difference in iOS 15.3 vs previous versions?
Click to expand...
It periodically did it before iCloud relay when just on the carrier, wouldn’t read too much into it.
 
Some sites are acting weird. The description said it’s only working in Safari but I’ve had a lot of problems with the Instagram app. I’ve deleted Instagram anyway, but I’ve only wanted to mention it.
 
Blue Hawk said:
Some sites are acting weird. The description said it’s only working in Safari but I’ve had a lot of problems with the Instagram app. I’ve deleted Instagram anyway, but I’ve only wanted to mention it.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure its just a Safari extension of sorts. When I goto a "what's my ip" webpages Safari's location is 30 miles south of me with an IP that isn't mine. Do the same thing with Firefox and it tells me my exact ISP, IP and nearer location..
 
randomgeeza said:
iCloud Private Relay and Limit IP Address tracking are great in theory but I've found that they impact both the speed of your connection and in some instances, similarly to the one you have had, they can stop certain websites. I've turned it all off and opted to use a VPN when I need to go anon.
Click to expand...

Exact opposite for me. I recently got NordVPN to try it out. I had Surfshark and it was slow...for me anyway. ExpressVPN and NordVPN have been about the same.

Baseline
IMG_5075.PNG

iCloud Private Relay (in Safari)
IMG_5076.PNG

NordVPN IKEv2 protocol
IMG_5077.PNG

NordLynx Protocol
IMG_5078.PNG

Apple Private Relay with NordVPN IKEv2 (feel like I should put on a tinfoil hat and some tape over the front camera)
IMG_AF2AAE622BA3-1.jpeg

Take aways, jitter and ping are obviously increased with Private Relay and Nord over baseline, no surprise. Second speedtest screenshot shows 'iCloud Private Relay' however adding a VPN to the mix 5th screenshot seems to hide that. When using the Private Relay OR NordVPN my fake location isn't terribly far from me. Using Private Relay AND NordVPN it puts me in New York City which is a good distance away.

Speed isn't a huge factor for me on an smartphone, at least not when its 50mbps or higher. Honestly I can't notice much faster, maybe if I were to time app downloads something.
 
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