UK Network Operators Target iCloud Private Relay in Complaint to Regulator

[polyphenol]

I hadn't got round to switching Private Relay on.

Sure as hell I am going to do it now.

Update:

Now switched on. And I remembered the word Beta put me off initially.

 

[Brenster]

As an otherwise happy EE customer for my household’s phone connectivity, I’m already paying them for their ‘product’ - a nice, fast intErnet connection to get ME and my family where WE want to go. Where we go, how often and why is none of EEs business barring ensuring that we can.

 

[ruka.snow]

Mobile and home internet providers. You are just a utility to provide me data, I am not a customer that you can nor need a profile on. Your only function is to provide fast data rates at acceptable prices or you are replaced by another provider that will provide that function.

 

[FyrStrike]

😂 Mobile UK’s arguements are completely baseless and are only trying to argue a n excuse to benefit the phone companies and advertisers to spy on its citizens. What a joke this is. Lol 😆

 

[macmedal]

This is not about the surveillance state. Just an excuse to try and gain some traction and support.

Far more worrying is the data mined on individuals for commercial enterprise. I have nothing to hide, so I couldn't give a crap if the UK government wanted to waste time looking at at me, which of course is highly unlikely, despite what conspiracy theorists may believe.

What I do care about is the intrusion of privacy of my personal data, by commercial entities. Who think it is acceptable to create a profile on me and sell it for further gain, to undisclosed third parties, to target me for other commercial activity to make more money or use my data for other nefarious enterprises.

 

[StevieD100]

When I look at the stats for my website that is hosted in the UK (via StatCounter), I see iCloud Private Relay ONLY on traffic from the UK and Finland. All the rest of the ISPs are there for all to see. Google Fibre, Comcast, Windstream, AT&T etc. All the usual suspects are there. For the UK and Finland, there is almost zero traffic that isn't via private relay.

It will be interesting to see how this develops.

 

[xabe]

Would anyone know of UK mobile network providers that aren't related to EE, Virgin Media O2, Three or Vodafone?

I'm using Giffgaff at the moment and I thought they were independent, but they're just a subsidiary of O2... That seems to be the case for all smaller network providers I could find. Either using EE, Three or O2's infrastructure. Are there no other options than those four providers?

 

[sdz]

When I look at the stats for my website that is hosted in the UK (via StatCounter), I see iCloud Private Relay ONLY on traffic from the UK and Finland. All the rest of the ISPs are there for all to see. Google Fibre, Comcast, Windstream, AT&T etc. All the usual suspects are there. For the UK and Finland, there is almost zero traffic that isn't via private relay.

It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Is it because they block porn sites ?

 

[3304614]

I have to actively choose to pay for iCloud+ and then actively choose to enable Private Relay. Those two choices are mine and I made those choices freely (and at any point I could choose to disable Private Relay or stop paying for iCloud+). I want to pay for iCloud+ and I want to use the Private Relay feature. Both are very useful to me. I’m not sure who regulators around the world are hoping to protect by trying to ban Private Relay (-edit- that’s not true — I do know who), but it definitely isn’t me the user.

 

[jlc1978]

TL;DR: UK operators whine Apple prevents data mining, costing them money.

 

[krspkbl]

Would anyone know of UK mobile network providers that aren't related to EE, Virgin Media O2, Three or Vodafone?

I'm using Giffgaff at the moment and I thought they were independent, but they're just a subsidiary of O2... That seems to be the case for all smaller network providers I could find. Either using EE, Three or O2's infrastructure. Are there no other options than those four providers?

nah, those are the only networks. all the others are MVNO's that run on the big networks. I've been with Giffgaff since 2010 when I got an iPhone 4 and that, as you know, uses O2's network.

Some other ones that use O2 are Sky Mobile and Tesco Mobile. SMARTY uses Three and VOXI is Vodafone. You can see the full list here:

List of mobile virtual network operators in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I hadn't got round to switching Private Relay on.

Sure as hell I am going to do it now.

Update:

Now switched on. And I remembered the word Beta put me off initially.

When I first tried it as part of the iOS 15 beta Private Relay had some issues. Some pages would load slowly or not at all. I turned it off and tried it again when iOS 15 was released. It was a bit unstable still but better. Now I run Private Relay 24/7 on both my iPhone + iPad with hardly any problems. There were a couple times when I logged into Amazon i'd get a notification saying I had logged in from the US (I'm in the UK) but that hasn't happened recently and the only other minor inconvenience I have with it is when I try to access my router settings through Safari because it will eventually freeze the page. If I'm going to be messing about with the router configuration I'll temporily disable Private Relay.

 

[xabe]

nah, those are the only networks. all the others are MVNO's that run on the big networks. I've been with Giffgaff since 2010 when I got an iPhone 4 and that, as you know, uses O2's network.

Some other ones that use O2 are Sky Mobile and Tesco Mobile. SMARTY uses Three and VOXI is Vodafone. You can see the full list here:

List of mobile virtual network operators in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thanks for the list, really appreciate it.

Oh well, that's me upgrading to iCloud Private Relay then 🙃

 

[Jim Lahey]

Mobile and home internet providers. You are just a utility to provide me data, I am not a customer that you can nor need a profile on. Your only function is to provide fast data rates at acceptable prices or you are replaced by another provider that will provide that function.

Government has other ideas. To my knowledge they already legislate that ISPs keep records of all visited URLs. This new 'complaint' is just another tentacle of the Citizen Surveillance Bill that's quietly being pushed through parliament while people are busy waving blue and yellow flags about.

 

[wbd]

Wow - this is the greatest advertisement for iCloud private relay!

 

[TiggrToo]

This is shameful and cynical lobbying dressing up in a convoluted manner as public interest. Apple is differentiating itself as more privacy minded than the majority of grossly commercial operators who try to scrape a seedy living from duplicitous advertising and reselling of private information. Please Apple continue as you are doing. I’m happy to pay extra for some peace of mind.

I agree with you, but I've never understood why people are surprised that operators are "self-serving." Do you/we actually think Apple is anything but?

Apple is not a knight in shining armour. It is very much using all of its leverage to get you deeper into its ecosystem to spend more money on Apple hardware and services and less on competitors'.

The question is -- and always was -- where is the line? I'm not convinced that Apple has crossed it, at least not consistently, but that doesn't mean that in all of these complaints Apple is always the good guy. Apple has built wonderful things that have improved our lives, but it can also be a nasty bully.

This for me sums it up. I know Apple at not angels, I know I pay handsomely to use their services and devices, and I know that they answer to the shareholders over customers.

But since they seem practice privacy first, I'm willing to pay for that privacy.

Innocent until proven guilty perhaps? Either way, Noone else in the market offers what they do so that's why my money goes to them.

 

[bluecoast]

I’m not sure how private relay is giving Apple a massive competitive advantage.

Proper VPNs are way more fully featured.

It seems that the real issue, is that the networks are going to lose big datasets re how many people from what region and (presumed) demographics access what services - which they can then sell onto third parties (and use themselves to develop services).

If DuckDuckGo had a bigger market share, I’m sure the same people would be arguing against that too for similar reasons.

Ban private relay and you’ll just push more and more people to use VPNs - and as that happens, their subscription cost will gradually go down thus attracting even more people.

Finally: I do think private relay should be encrypting all WebKit traffic though ie from competing browsers etc.

 

[IllinoisCorn]

Here come the nanny state Europeans again....lol.

 

[MALmen]

Laughable, just laughable..

 

[bgraham]

Bought iCloud+ just for Private Relay after reading this.

Screw the UK Government and my network snooping on me for “”national security””.

 

[KevinAPearson]

The sooner Apple provides their own mobile network the better!

 

[LV426]

Would anyone know of UK mobile network providers that aren't related to EE, Virgin Media O2, Three or Vodafone?

I'm using Giffgaff at the moment and I thought they were independent, but they're just a subsidiary of O2... That seems to be the case for all smaller network providers I could find. Either using EE, Three or O2's infrastructure. Are there no other options than those four providers?

AFAIK those four operators have the UK markets sewn up. You need a huge amount of money to bid for a place on the wireless spectrum.

 

[Mountain/\Ash]

The only valid bit that is likely to be an issue is how it changes "Government investigatory powers" (which isn't something that anyone [apart from the Govt.] want anyway) - but this should be coming from the Govt. themselves and not the telecoms consortium. But I'm sure that Apple's lawyers are already aware of this, and the service passes the laws where it's allowed (and that's also why there's a list of countries that it can't be used in - like China)

 

[cmcbhi]

"For example, a network provider may no longer have access to information about a user's content viewing habits to develop their own content that competes with Apple TV. Similarly, a network provider may no longer be able to share consumer insight with third parties that provide digital advertizing services in competition with Apple Search Ads....."

I can totally see why this is bad for those who want to mine MY data, but it is TOTALLY good for me. The ISPs ARE reduced to providing a conduit to and from the internet as thy should be.
FWIW do the plaintiffs also object to me using private VPN?

 

[movielad]

Does anybody know of a way that consumers can file a response to this request from Mobile UK, because it is all too easy to disprove their claims and Mobile UK does not speak for me as a consumer. They're talking utter bollocks.

 

[Arbuthnott]

A group of UK network operators have formally urged the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to regulate iCloud Private Relay, claiming that Apple's privacy service is anti-competitive, potentially bad for users, and a threat to national security.
[...]
Mobile UK urged the CMA to implement "a remedy that limits the use of Private Relay," or "at the very least" prevent "Apple from making Private Relay a default-on service." The complaint noted that "Private relay is currently default-off but it is already being used by a significant portion of Apple customers in the UK, despite being in beta mode."
[...]

Article Link: UK Network Operators Target iCloud Private Relay in Complaint to Regulator

How extraordinary that all these companies, many of whom I would have put right up there at the top of the "Evil and Anti-Person" end of the list, were apparently on my side all along! Who would have thunk it! Amazing also that they care about the quality of my browsing experience. I am happy to reassure them all that they needn't have bothered, and they appear to have misunderstood. Any feedback from me was actually cries of joy and not any sort of negative signal. Apple is doing GREAT STUFF, and no doubt all these caring companies will rush to support them as soon as they understand the extent to which they have misunderstood the public reaction.

Of course, it could be that a significant proportion of Apple users are simply using the "Private Relay" by sheer accident, and need friendly and caring support to realise that they should have turned it off ...