iOS 15 'iCloud Private Relay' Feature Won't Be Available in China, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and More

Alongside iOS 15, Apple introduced an iCloud+ service that adds new features to its paid ‌iCloud‌ plans. One of these features is ‌iCloud‌ Private Relay, which is designed to encrypt all of the traffic leaving your device so no one can intercept it or read it.

Apple did not mention country limitations for the feature when announcing it, but Apple told Reuters that Private Relay will not be launching in China, Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the Philippines,

According to Apple, regulatory reasons are preventing the Private Relay feature from launching in those countries.

Private Relay sends web traffic to a server that is maintained by Apple to strip the IP address. Once IP info has been removed, Apple sends the traffic to a second server maintained by a third-party company that assigns a temporary IP address and then sends the traffic to its destination, a process that prevents your IP address, location, and browsing activity from being used to create a profile about you.

Involving an outside party in the relay system is an intentional move that Apple says was designed to prevent anyone, including Apple, from knowing a user's identity and the website the user is visiting.

‌iCloud‌ Private Relay is available with any paid ‌iCloud‌ storage plan, and Apple has not changed pricing, so upgraded ‌iCloud‌ storage tiers start at $0.99. ‌iCloud‌+ also includes a new Hide My Email feature that lets you create unique, random email addresses that forward to your personal inbox, and it allows for ‌iCloud‌ Mail addresses to be personalized with a custom domain name.

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