Apple Has Disabled ‘Private Relay’ for Russian Users in iOS 15 and macOS 12
Published on September 17, 2021
- Apple has removed ‘Private Relay’ support from Russia in beta iOS 15 and macOS 12.
- The company hasn’t given any explanations about this move, but it’s clearly a case of state pressure.
- The feature was supposed to help users hide their real IP address from all third parties.
Apple appears to be further succumbing to the pressure of the Russian state, and as local tech outlets have confirmed, the consumer tech maker has removed the ‘Private Relay’ feature that would be introduced in the upcoming major OS releases of the company to help users hide their real IP address from all intermediaries, service providers, and even Apple themselves. This feature was presented during WWDC 2021 as an analogue of a VPN service’s functionality, but Apple has previously warned that national legal restrictions could impact its availability in some cases. As it’s being confirmed now, Russia is one of them.
Other countries where this feature won’t be made available are Belarus, Egypt, Kazakhstan, China, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, the Philippines, and South Africa. The issue with Russia is that Apple initially promised to offer this new feature there, but it appears that the internet regulators in the country moved quickly to scrap these plans before the upcoming iOS, iPadOS, and macOS versions were rolled out to people. As such, those using iOS 15 in beta now see the following difference (left – before, right – after).
For now, Apple hasn’t provided an official explanation about what happened or why they decided to disable the feature. Seeing ‘Private Relay’ returning to normal availability when the stable version of the OS is out is extremely unlikely as this isn’t a temporary “graying out” to fix something. The clear message of not offering the feature in the particular region doesn’t leave much hope on that front.
At the same time that this development has disappointed Russian iOS users, the Ministry of Digital Science has announced the addition of four more apps to be pre-installed on all electronic gadgets sold in the country, including the iPhone. No app names were mentioned, but the Ministry stated that the quartet includes a program to read or listen to books, an online store, an online music and radio listening service, and a platform for conferencing.
