iCloud Private Relay Down for Some Users

Wednesday November 3, 2021 12:35 pm PDT by Juli Clover

Apple's iCloud Private Relay option is not working for some users, according to Apple's System Status page. The feature is experiencing an outage and is unavailable at the current time.

icloud private relay unavailable
According to Apple, the outage started at 11:40 a.m. Pacific Time and it is ongoing. Those who are having ‌iCloud‌ Private Relay issues may have received a notification letting them know that the feature is currently down, but will be re-enabled when it's back up and working.

On Apple devices, going to the ‌iCloud‌ Private Relay setting shows that it is temporarily unavailable due to a technical problem.

‌iCloud‌ Private Relay is an Apple service that ensures Safari traffic leaving an iPhone, iPad, or Mac is encrypted. It uses two separate internet relays to ensure that companies cannot access personal information like IP address, location, and browsing information to create a detailed profile about you.

‌iCloud‌ Private Relay is accessible to anyone with a paid ‌iCloud‌ account, priced starting at $0.99 per month.

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Top Rated Comments

zorinlynx

66 months ago

This is one of those features that I'm glad is available in case I have to use a dodgy untrusted network, but would never leave on all the time. It just makes routing less efficient and adds latency to everything.

Many large services on the Internet have servers distributed around the world so that you're talking to a system close to you network-wise. The Google servers you're using might be in the downtown of the city you're in, for example. iCloud Private Relay ruins this efficiency because now your traffic might be relayed through god-knows-where before it goes to the service you're using.

Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Techwatcher

66 months ago

So that's what happened on my phone earlier.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

211

66 months ago

I hate getting the notifications for this. Is there a way to switch them off?

Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

jmgregory1

66 months ago

This afternoon all my emails from mailing lists I’ve been getting for ever, stopped loading images and included a note that my network settings were not allowing them to be loaded. I assume this outage is what caused the problem…

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

MrGimper

66 months ago

Do you mind doing a speed test?

I read a lot of people saying it slows down their internet speed but I hardly feel it at all. The only thing that slows it is the hundreds of tabs that I have open.

Could it be the user's location? If Privacy Relay is similar to VPN, then that makes sense. The speed of VPN servers varies depending on your proximity to them.

I’m in the UK and I’ve had it kill my speed from 380mbit down to 80-100mbit regularly.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)