Apple's new 'private relay' feature will not be available in China
Apple Inc on Monday said a new "private relay"
feature designed to obscure a user's web browsing behavior from internet
service providers and advertisers will not be available in China for regulatory
reasons.
The feature was one of a number of privacy protections Apple announced at
its annual software developer conference on Monday, the latest in a years-long
effort by the company to cut down on the tracking of its users by advertisers
and other third parties.
Apple's decision to withhold the feature in China is the latest
in a string of compromises the company has made on privacy in a country that
accounts for nearly 15% of its revenue.
In 2018, Apple moved the
digital keys used to lock Chinese users' iCloud data, allowing authorities to
work through domestic courts to gain access to the information.
China's ruling Communist Party maintains a vast surveillance
system to keep a close eye on how citizens use the country's heavily controlled
internet. Under President Xi Jinping, the space for dissent in China has narrowed,
while censorship has expanded.
Apple's "private relay" feature first sends web traffic
to a server maintained by Apple, where it is stripped of a piece of information
called an IP address. From there, Apple sends the traffic to a second server
maintained by a third-party operator who assigns the user a temporary IP
address and sends the traffic onward to its destination website.
The use of an outside party in the second hop of the relay system
is intentional, Apple said, to prevent even Apple from knowing both the user's
identity and what website the user is visiting.
Apple said it also will not offer "private relay" in
Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan,
Uganda and the Philippines.
Apple has not yet disclosed which outside partners it will use in
the system but said it plans to name them in the future. The feature likely
will not become available to the public until later this year.
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