Everything in their complaint is precisely the reason why their customers want to use Private Relay! We don't want our browsing data observed and analysed by network operators, we want a dumb pipe that gets out of our way.
I'm not surprised by this move – the UK's conservative government is very fond of trying to control the internet, and since the "Snooper's Charter" went live in 2016, but apparently half the young population of the UK know about VPNs and 25% tor specifically for getting around blocks on pornography [1] – so clearly, these commercial complaints are doomed to fail.<p>I personally have never used Apple's private relay, but I have encrypted all my traffic since Snooper's Charter. The fact that the industry bodies are complaining about it -- effectively complaining that they can't spy and snoop on their users, often for commercial gain -- makes me think it is effective.<p>[1] <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/poi3.250" rel="nofollow">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/poi3.250</a>
So the mobile companies are miffed that they can no longer mine the data they carry for their own benefit?<p>It does favour Apple in the market, though, because Apple can still see all the traffic, which is what the CMA in interested in. What is needed is for the mobile companies to offer the same protections that Apple offers, so all will benefit.
I’m wondering what prevents network operators from just disabling the use of Private Relay on their networks.<p>This could be achieved both via legal means (in e.g. their terms of service to prohibit use of any VPNs or similar software) as well as on a technical level. As per [1]:<p>> The fastest and most reliable way to do this is to return a negative answer from the network’s DNS resolver, preventing DNS resolution for the mask.icloud.com and mask-h2.icloud.com hostnames necessary for Private Relay traffic.<p>These ISPs surely operate some DNS resolvers - just make them return NXDOMAIN results. This doesn’t require consent or collaboration from Apple.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/iCloud_Private_Relay_Overview_Dec2021.PDF" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/iCloud_Private_Relay_Over...</a>
So as someone who setup a freeswitch PBX with some devices to move the land line onto a computer network and then ran a voip phone on my mobile connected to the freeswitch PBX without and inside a VPN, the teleco's do mess around with voip calls.<p>The national security element is probably valid, but preemptive action is taken against people here in the UK (prejudiced by science or just a form of scientific reinforcement) to mess around with people from an early age.<p>Govt's, Religions and industry leading entities dont want their positions in society messed around with.
Oh, fuck those people, why not moan about tor, P2P and other encrypted protocols as well? They're just annoyed they can't monitor communications for the pleasure of the UK government who have historically proven to be a bunch of snoops? As an UK resident, I wish they'd shut up and whine about more important issues instead. Bunch of nosey morons that think there's a potential terrorist hiding under every broadband router!
I’ve been thinking of switching to a different operator for a while and this is the last drop.<p>But so now, what’s left on offer if I exclude those associated within the Mobile UK group?
> Mobile UK says that due to Private Relay, "providers will be unable to use the traffic data to develop their own competing mobile browsers in the future”<p>Thanks but I like my carriers to be dumb pipes
While I don't have tons of sympathy for the complaint, it exemplifies a trend we’ve been seeing for a long time: privacy at all costs, trust nobody. I think this stance is dangerous when deployed wholesale and without nuance to our technologies and protocols.<p>Here’s what I mean: rather than technology sewing a ski mask onto my head so that nobody can see me online, I’d rather have technology inform me about the nature of the site or network I’m using so I can make the choice of what my posture should be. I <i>want</i> to trust the services I use because they’re respectable and have earned my trust. If everyone is wearing a mask then how can I trust anyone? I’m not super excited about an internet where we trust nobody.<p>A concrete example: TLS 1.3. What if I want to trust a 3rd party to help me keep an eye on my traffic at a network level? Can’t now because sites can always know if there’s a MITM and of course they assume that’s always bad and unintended. (Perhaps they’re actually more interested in retaining proprietary access to <i>their</i> traffic.) Instead why can’t TLS allow me to configure a cipher-suite that allows me to e.g. run my own proxy for <insert reason>?<p>Same for browsers. Shouldn’t the browser be <i>asking me</i> which pieces of information and which APIs I want to allow a site to access (with sensible defaults, of course) rather than locking all the useful stuff behind “secure contexts”? It’s really hard to not see some of this privacy paranoia as conveniently enabling a lot of subversive platform control…