Icloud private relay

[Wolfey]

Well I have been a customer of sky for 11 years or more

Broadband and mobile only

after they could not find ir offer me a deal to keep me. I found an alternative provider slowler speed but i don't really utilise my gfast speeds at all 

now i am on my final days before the switch over 

i keep getting your network is not compatible with iclouds private relay 

i assume sky is cracking down and want to maximise snooping on their customers big time 

if my other provider starts doing this. Its soon to be time to invest in a VPN

as i am not happy with how much the survailance has increased on snooping on people 

but well done sky. You lost a valued customer 

I understand why the team didn't call me back or seemed so quick to cancel because they couldn't offer anything 

but the icing for me is trying to block private relay by apple

[GD1]

@Wolfey  Yes Sky are blocking access to the Apple relay becuar they are vindictive!

Do you really believe that?  

[TimmyBGood]

@Wolfey 

Rather more likely that the Apple tendancy to play fast and loose with established protocols also tends to break things.  iCloud Private Relay relies on encrypted DNS and Apple themselves admits this will cause traffic to be denied transit across some networks until the network providers can figure out how to make it compatible with existing systems such as age limits on site access.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT213548 

[Skull+Treaty]

---

@Wolfey wrote:

if my other provider starts doing this. Its soon to be time to invest in a VPN

---

Just make sure you do review of the VPN provider before signing up to one.

Using a VPN in the first place has potentially grave consequences for your privacy - and can often be worse than not using one in the first place.

It’s true that, generally speaking, when you use a VPN, the websites you visit don’t have access to your original IP address, which can be used to derive your approximate location (often not more specific than your city or neighborhood). But that’s not true of the VPN provider themselves - who can identify you much more precisely because you used your VPN login to access the service. Additionally, they can promise not to siphon off your data and write it down somewhere - tracking you, selling it to advertisers, handing it over to law enforcement - but they could and you’d be none the wiser. By routing all of your traffic through a VPN, you route all of your traffic through a VPN.

Another advantage offered by VPNs is that they can prevent your ISP from knowing what you’re doing online. If you don’t trust your ISP but you do trust your VPN, this makes a lot of sense. It also makes sense if you’re on an unfamiliar network, like airport WiFi. However, it’s still quite important that you do trust the VPN on the other end. You need to do research. What country are they based in, and what’s their diplomatic relationship with your home country? What kind of power the local authorities have to force them to record & disclose your traffic? Are they backed by venture capitalists who expect infinite growth, and will they eventually have to meet those demands by way of selling your information to advertisers? What happens to you when their business is going poorly? How much do you trust their security competency - are they likely to be hacked? If you haven’t answered all of these questions yourself, then you should not use a VPN.

[cymru123]

This is a technical answer to the reason why rather than debating the use of VPNs and proxy servers:

It's most likely Sky Shield that's preventing DNS resolution for the following which is needed for apple iCloud private relay:

mask.icloud.com

mask-h2.icloud.com

Along with the device wanting to use ODoH for it's DNS resolver

You can turn it off - more info on Sky shield https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-broadband-shield-using

[Wolfey]

It's doing it on sky mobile data network as well. it started there first. Then today after 7am sky isp side it started to say my sky isp is incompatible and please turn it off 

so something is being rolled out. I believe its sky

there was a complaint lodged by the isps and mobile operators and from Europe over it bsck in 2022 re apples private relay. 

I have all the shields turned off. I even re enable d and deactivated the sheilds 

thank you for the advice guys on vpns 

[cymru123]

@Wolfey 

If you do a nslookup in cmd/terminal for mask.icloud.com

and then

mask-h2.icloud

What response do you get back?

[Kittygan]

I had this problem this morning, I spoke to sky and I turned off my router, I turn off my iPad and iPhone and my devices are working fine now 

[MR9009]

I've had problems with all my devices today suddenly also saying the same thing - that my Sky Broadband Wifi signal is incompatible with Apple's iCloud Private Relay. 

Before I saw this forum post, I got around it for a while just by turning wifi off and on again on the device.. But unpredictably, the same error comes back now and then. For a while it was just in the Safari browser. But it also popped up on my Mac, independent of the browser, like a general error message pop-up. 

I think I tried using Terminal on my Mac for your DNS lookup instructions, but I don't understand the results. Is there something we should be looking for?

[Wolfey]

It's intermittent.

so both resolve to amazon AWS. I used network tools app on my phone 

it works for a bit then will start saying safari is unable to connect 

i did reboot the router at first 

but it started on sky mobile first 

I assumed it was just an Apple problem initially 

i dont often use mobile data unless im out and only then it's just pulling music stream youtube music premium as i dont really browse the web when im walking around 

most times my phone is connected to wifi at work or home

i have rebooted my iPhone though just 

i mean it could be an outdated dns cache on my iPhone that needs purging if apple has made configuration changes to the dns 

i am always quick to assume the worst with these things involving privacy etc 

Will see after reboot 

I spoke to my friend who works in cybersecurity and he susgested NordVPN as a good service to use. As he uses that him self 

[Kittygan]

Hi

it came back on my iPhone and iPad so I contacted Apple and I reset my network connection then turned private relay back on then I click the i next to my internet connection and turned on my private ipaddress and both devices are up and running perfectly 🙌🏾☺️

[JoyMcG]

Noticed Private Relay down for us as well on my Mac & iPad, we use Sky Broadband.

The domains mentioned resolve with IP4 address (when trying ping), and with an IPv6 address when I try from a server I have outside of Sky. (Neither send replies to ping).

On the iPad for some reason the "Limit IP Address Tracking" in the Wifi connection settings was turned off where it hadn't been before. Likewise it was off in the Network Settings for the Wifi connection.

However "Limit IP Address Tracking" was still on for my iPhone.

[Paul+Dray]

@cymru123 wrote:

This is a technical answer to the reason why rather than debating the use of VPNs and proxy servers:

It's most likely Sky Shield that's preventing DNS resolution for the following which is needed for apple iCloud private relay:

mask.icloud.com

mask-h2.icloud.com

Along with the device wanting to use ODoH for it's DNS resolver

You can turn it off - more info on Sky shield https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-broadband-shield-using

---

This is the answer ^
I've been wondering why some sites have been hanging whilst on my sky Wi-Fi but if I switch to 4g mobile network it loads fine. I realise now that since having iCloud+ which enabled Private Relay on my MacBook Pro and having enabled hide ip address feature on my other devices this has been occurring. Unfortunately these features are incompatible with Sky Broadband Shield. It's a matter of switching either one off. There is a way of reloading a page without hiding ip address temporarily for that browsing session but I can't be doing with all that. Hope this helps others.