During latest revision WWDC Apple has unveiled a suite of privacy-focused features, including Private Relay, which is part of a new cloud-based subscription service called iCloud +. However, Apple’s recently announced functionality won’t make it to China.
According to Reuters, Apple said China has been removed from the list of countries where Private Relay will be available due to regulatory restrictions. Countries such as Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uganda and the Philippines are also part of the set of countries that will not have access to the functionality.
Private Relay allows a user to “hide” their online activities from ISPs, preventing other users or services from knowing what they are accessing, and while Apple does not explicitly mention it, it works as a kind of VPN.
Through it, user traffic is encrypted and sent to the Apple server, where the original IP address is removed. The traffic is then sent to another server, this time managed by a third party, which assigns it a temporary IP address.
The Cupertino giant has yet to reveal which third-party companies will provide their services for the Private Relay system, but Reuters claims that the company plans to make them famous in the future. Apparently, this functionality will only be available to iCloud + subscribers later this year.
Remember, this isn’t the first time Apple has made concessions on privacy features in China, a country that accounts for about 15% of its revenues. In May, it became known about a new investigation that Apple will agree to relax the rules and change its privacy policy for managing customer data in China to accommodate local government requests.
In 2018, Apple began store cryptographic keys of Chinese iCloud accounts in China… Thanks to this measure applied to residents who chose China as their main country when creating an account, keys are now stored in a data center operated by the state-owned Guizhou – Cloud Big Data Industry Co Ltd. (GCBD) in partnership with Apple. …
In practice, this decision means that the Chinese authorities rely solely on their legal system when requesting access to iCloud data, a situation that human rights defenders have identified as worrying, as the authorities may use the same powers to harass dissidents. Back in 2017, Apple was forced to removing various VPN apps from the Chinese version of the App Store…
