- Apple is rolling out a feature known as Privacy Relay
on the new iOS 15.
And there is a lot to like about the way that it protects us
from a lot of different forms of online tracking.
Not to mention how it mimics things like VPN and Tor,
but it is not a VPN,
and it is not Tor.
So what is Apple's Privacy Relay?
Well, I spent the last couple of weeks testing it out
and here's what I found.
(upbeat music)
(swooshes loudly)
Welcome to All Things Secured.
My name's Josh, and I realized that we just stepped away
from a controversy that Apple is dealing with related
to their privacy practices and child protection.
But I also realized that there are millions upon millions
of people that still use Apple products,
and they're not gonna be throwing them away anytime soon.
So these type of features are still gonna have value
and benefit to those people,
including myself that still use Apple products.
And so Privacy Relay is an interesting way
to attack this kind of privacy stuff.
Now, before I go into how it works and what it looks like,
which I'm gonna show you my phone screen
in just a little bit,
I also want to explain a little bit more about privacy
'cause what we're doing here is we're talking about
the who, that's accessing the internet,
and the what, what are we accessing?
All right, the who, obviously, being us,
our devices, computer, iPads, whatever,
and the what, what URL we're visiting, what websites,
what companies, what things we're looking for online.
And when these two pieces of information
are attached together,
companies are able to build profiles on us to understand
who we are, what we like,
just develop different traits about us.
But being able to separate those two pieces of information,
the who, and the what, that is where privacy begins
to have a benefit for us and being able to separate
that information out.
So the way that Privacy Relay does this
is that when we access the internet
through the Safari browser on our phone, on our computer,
or whatnot, with the Privacy Relay on,
it encrypts our data as it heads to Apple servers
very similar to a VPN.
Now, unlike a VPN, you cannot choose which server
or which country you want to access the internet from,
but that encryption does happen between your computer
or your device and Apple servers.
Now, what Apple does is they strip away the IP address
that's attached to that information.
They can't see what URL you want to go to yet,
but they can see your IP address, that who piece.
And so they're gonna take that away,
and then they're gonna send that information
over to a third-party,
which in my case, as I've been testing, is Cloudflare.
Now, Cloudflare does not know the original IP address.
It does not know the who, the me, the my device,
however, they're able to decrypt that package
and know where it's going, what website I'm visiting.
And so they're gonna decrypt it.
They're going to add an anonymous IP address
because you have to have an IP address,
and then it will send it off into the internet.
So in the end, you have Apple that knows obviously
who you are, but in this case, with Privacy Relay on,
they're not gonna know where you're going.
And then you have Cloudflare or some other third-party
that knows where you wanna go,
but it doesn't know who you are.
It's lost that IP information.
So again, we've detached these two to create
a better level of privacy.
Now, the way that you would do this is you would go
into your Settings app.
I'm gonna do that right now.
And then on the top, you're gonna see your name and iCloud,
and you're going to click into iCloud,
and you're gonna see Privacy Relay about four rows down.
Now, if you wanna turn that on,
you're gonna notice that there's another level
that comes in that says IP Address Location.
This is where you do get one choice of how you want
your IP address location to come up.
So normally, if I were to look up my IP address,
it's gonna show my city,
it's gonna show a lot of information
about who and where I am.
And let's say I'm in Chicago accessing the internet,
if I want to maintain a general location,
meaning when I access the internet,
I still want Chicago related searches to come up.
I can maintain my general location.
However, if I really don't care about that,
I can Use Country and Time Zone,
which is just going to choose
a random IP address in the United States
and possibly within the central time zone
where Chicago's at.
Those are the only two options I get, which again,
makes this very different from a VPN
or at least a commercial VPN
because I don't get to choose which server I'm going into.
I can't use this to unblock geo-block content
like Netflix or Disney Plus if I'm outside the US
or BBC iPlayer or anything like that.
So I don't have that level of control,
which is where this very much differs from a VPN.
I think it's a lot more like Tor
and that you are dividing information
between different nodes,
the first node, obviously, being Apple servers
and the second node being a third-party like Cloudflare.
Now, if you notice, when I have this on,
when I access the internet and then check my IP address,
it's gonna show as not being my actual IP address.
Obviously, I'm here in Thailand,
this is showing that I'm in London.
Granted, when we talk about being in the same country,
I think as we're beta testing right now,
Cloudflare's just giving everyone a London address,
but it's supposed to later just give me an address,
some sort of IP address in Thailand
since that's where I'm located.
Now, what's really interesting is that if I were to access
through Firefox, which is the browser that I normally use
to access the internet,
you're gonna see that my IP address
is my actual IP address in Thailand.
And I'm gonna blur it out obviously,
but this is my IP address.
So what I'm saying here is that all internet traffic
does not get encrypted and routed through this Privacy Relay
when you're using Privacy Relay.
Only the stuff that you do through the Safari browser
is what gets encrypted and sent through the relay.
Now, there's pros and cons to this.
I've noticed as I've been testing out iOS 15
that a lot of the privacy features hide my email address,
being another one are really only available to those people
who use Apple related apps,
so the Mail app or the Safari internet browser.
And I prefer to use Firefox,
that's just something that I like.
And because of that, the Privacy Relay probably gonna,
isn't going to be as beneficial to me.
Or if I am going to use it,
I'll have to make sure that I use Safari
anytime that I wanna use the Privacy Relay.
Anytime, let's say I'm getting on a public wifi network
or I'm just wanting to add that extra level of anonymity
when I'm accessing the internet.
So it's very much like Tor in that way, in that when,
a lot of times when you're using Tor,
it only works when you're using the Tor browser.
Now, it is not available to every person
that upgrades to iOS 15.
In order to use Privacy Relay,
you're gonna have to subscribe to some iCloud account,
which could be just the standalone iCloud Plus
that gives you extra storage for your backups and photos,
or it could be Apple One,
which is where you have access to Apple Music, Apple TV,
and extra cloud storage.
Either way, it is a paid feature.
And it's one of those things
where it's not like a super accessible feature
to turn on and off.
And so I can imagine myself turning it on,
keeping it on at all times,
and then only using the Safari browser
when I want that extra level of anonymity,
but then going back and using Firefox
for a lot of the rest of the browsing
that I might want to do the rest of the time.
So almost like an incognito window,
except better, obviously, than an incognito window
and a lot more private.
If you have any questions about Privacy Relay,
you can leave them in the comments below.
So what do you think?
Is Privacy Relay a valuable feature to you?
Is this something that you're gonna be using
once you upgrade to iOS 15?
Let me know in the comments below.
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comment with any other questions,
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