Apple's iCloud+ “VPN” • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#191

Post by shaicoleman » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #175

jameshart wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not so sure. If you read back up that thread, the thought that triggered it was from qzervaas: Apple's already shown they don't like this behaviour with their randomised MAC addresses in iOS 8+. And elsewhere in the thread people called out the fact apple had already introduced support for ad blocking. So Apple’s privacy-positive posture was already in the air. I think there is a sense in which privacy was alread…

Steve Jobs talking about this at D8 in 2010, and of course the privacy features he talks about were baked into the OS APIs from the start. Apple's rift with Google over user data collection in Google Maps goes back to 2009 when Google held Apple to ransom for the user data in return for turn-by-turn directions. Apple refused and started building their own maps service, buying Placebase in July that year. https://www.…

If anyone's interested in reading more, here's an article which discusses why Apple switched from Google Maps:

http://allthingsd.com/20120926/apple-google-maps-talks-crash...

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#192

Post by modernerd » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

> It's not clear if the API will be public for other browsers or applications to use.

Apple has already confirmed that other app traffic will go through iCloud Private Relay “no matter what networking API you're using”, with some exemptions:

> Not all networking done by your app occurs over the public internet, so there are several categories of traffic that are not affected by Private Relay.

> Any connections your app makes over the local network or to private domain names will be unaffected.

> Similarly, if your app provides a network extension to add VPN or app-proxying capabilities, your extension won't use Private Relay and neither will app traffic that uses your extension.

> Traffic that uses a proxy is also exempt.

From https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10096/.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#193

Post by danpalmer » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #166

danpalmer wrote: post #9

Props to Apple for the design of this service. It doesn't hit all the privacy targets that long-time personal VPN users might be looking for, and it doesn't get into the game of trying to circumvent region locked content*, but otherwise it's likely to be a solid privacy improvement for almost all users in a careful and deliberate way. I use a VPN for other reasons (downloading Ubuntu ISOs mostly) but I'll probably tu…

Which vpn do you use?

Private Internet Access.

I used to use NordVPN but found it to be much slower, less stable, worse macOS integration, not as good on the privacy front.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#194

Post by larkost » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

867-5309 wrote: post #76

mavhc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not running a vpn from your house?

the tenants wouldn't approve (they pay for elec and internet). plus I'm away for twelve months so no chance of onsite troubleshooting, physical reboots after power outages, etc.

So, you are saying that the TV license you are paying for is actually being used by the renters in the house you own. Is that a fair statement? That puts a bit of a different spin on it.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#195

Post by gonehome » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

I was curious how they would actually implement this, if it's actually onion routing that's pretty cool.

I wonder what advantage this gives over using NextDNS?

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#196

Post by symlinkk » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

olivierestsage wrote: post #54

Spooky23 wrote: post #7

I think this is great, if only as a way to kill the bullshit consumer VPN business, which sells snake oil.

I think that's painting with a pretty broad brush. What's wrong with Mullvad, for example?

Who runs Mullvad?

I find it funny that people here mistrust companies like Facebook and Google, but then turn around and hand off their entire network activity to a faceless, anonymous VPN company.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#197

Post by dividuum » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

EveYoung wrote: post #149

dividuum wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the service is to hide the client source IP.

Not necessarily. I thought it was mainly about encrypting traffic in untrusted networks. Cloudflare already does it like this in their VPN service.

Correct. I guess it wasn't really obvious from the linked mail. The introduction video at https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10096/ is a lot clearer.

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#198

Post by kalleboo » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #111

judge2020 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to give context, a link to the story would be nice: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/fake-dmca-takedown-n... Importantly, OpSec (the company doing this torrent-dmca-for-hire stuff) says the DMCA itself was spoofed > OpSec Security’s DCMA notice sending program was spoofed on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, by unknown parties across multiple streaming platforms.

...who names their company "OpSec"? Are they actively wanting to be made fun-of at the next defcon?

Is anything worse than "Web Sheriff"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Sheriff

https://web.archive.org/web/20090122235038/https://thepirate...

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#199

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #111

judge2020 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to give context, a link to the story would be nice: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/fake-dmca-takedown-n... Importantly, OpSec (the company doing this torrent-dmca-for-hire stuff) says the DMCA itself was spoofed > OpSec Security’s DCMA notice sending program was spoofed on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, by unknown parties across multiple streaming platforms.

...who names their company "OpSec"? Are they actively wanting to be made fun-of at the next defcon?

[deleted]

Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”

#200

Post by headmelted » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #90

Interesting. I thought I recalled talking about this on HN previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10355868 _-__--- on Oct 8, 2015 | parent | favorite | on: Verizon revives "zombie cookie" device tracking on... Tor as an OS-level feature may not spark the best reaction. It's been given a bad name ("deep web," silk road, etc) in mass media and many people don't understand it enough to think of it as anything…

Your prediction of it being called Apple Undercover is significantly more 80’s though. And I like it.

So much so that I would accept Apple using something other than Helvetica this one time for a Miami Vice typeface and a Michael Knight and Kitt intro at WWDC.

I cannot stress enough that Hasselhoff needs to stay in character the entire time or the whole concept doesn’t work.