Together with iOS 15, Apple launched the iCloud+ service, adding new features to its paid iCloud plan. One of these features is iCloud Private Relay, which is designed to encrypt all traffic leaving your device so that no one can intercept or read it.
According to Apple, regulatory reasons prevent the company from launching private relays in countries such as Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the Philippines. Apple mentioned the restrictions in these countries in June, but it seems that private relays will also be unavailable in Russia because Apple has apparently disabled the feature in the past day or so.
According to reports from Twitter users and reports from iPhone s.ru, this feature was previously available in Russia through the beta versions of iOS15 and iPad OS15, but now when they try to enable it, these users are encountering Private is not supported in this area Relay the message.
iCloud Private Relay is no longer supported in Russia pic.twitter.com/df4z1q0gLQ
— Абдулла Хасан Иванов (@abdulla_hasan) September 16, 2021
The working principle of the private relay is to send network traffic to a server maintained by Apple to strip the IP address. Once the IP information is deleted, Apple sends the traffic to a second server maintained by a third-party company. The server assigns a temporary IP address and then sends the traffic to the destination. This process can prevent the visited party from passing the IP address, Location and browsing activities to create a profile about a specific individual.
Why Apple recently disabled the private relay system in Russia is not entirely clear, but the company has bowed to the requirements of the Russian authorities in the past, so there are good reasons to speculate that this is another regulatory issue.
