So far the two different third parties I’ve seen are Cloudflare and Akamai. Has worked relatively well here, besides the fact that some bug has made it so it turns back on randomly, which isn’t a big deal.
Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
11–20 of 413 posts
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#12My experience with this so far was... mixed. - This breaks DNS resolution for company-internal domains. - This routes all my traffic through CloudFlare or another CDN I might or might not trust (yes, the IP is hidden, but not the data) - it significantly slows down my internet access on my location. - it tends to turn itself on again without my intervention especially the last point is very problematic for me
"yes, the IP is hidden, but not the data"
Using TLS it certainly should be.
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#13My experience with this so far was... mixed. - This breaks DNS resolution for company-internal domains. - This routes all my traffic through CloudFlare or another CDN I might or might not trust (yes, the IP is hidden, but not the data) - it significantly slows down my internet access on my location. - it tends to turn itself on again without my intervention especially the last point is very problematic for me
Does Apple preserve the client source IP in the request (similar to Cloudflare's VPN) or will the server only see the IP of the exit node?
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#14Props 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…
Why do you use a VPN to download free and publicly available iso images? (Ubuntu). Just curious.
Do you download directly from a mirror or use BitTorrent for this? (If the latter I think I kind of understand the rationale for the VPN)
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#15Props 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…
> but UK residents do typically pay for the content whereas those outside the UK are unable to.
In essence, what you're saying boils down to "it's already paid for, but nobody else can have it anyway". It's unreasonable and there is no need to make excuses for this behaviour.
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#16https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10096/ A pretty decent overview of the scope of the product. As mentioned in the video, the service also is involved if your app does HTTP over port 80, offering at least some marginal level of improvement. Otherwise it leaves your app traffic as is. As to Mail, the linked comment mentions that but I don't remember it being a part of the solution (nor does it seem feas…
To be exact, the video says that it includes all insecure HTTP traffic, so if you use HTTPS for now you are saved.
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#17I don’t really mind paying few bucks for privacy. But I think Apple in the process is gonna kill a lot VPN providers. While I don’t care right now I hope it doesn’t make Apple a monopoly.
It won’t harm VPN providers, I don’t think, for a few reasons.
- VPNs are actually less private than iCloud+ double hop design, but could be much faster due to only having a single hop.
- Unlike a VPN, you can’t choose the location of the server you exit at, and the exit server cannot be in a different nation. If you are in the US, iCloud+‘s relays are in the US. No circumventing georestrictions here.
- Apple does not market their service as a VPN and never said it is one. For most customers, they don’t know this is a VPN substitute because it doesn’t call itself one. So if you have “VPN” in your mind, this isn’t something you think of as an option.
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#18Props 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…
Why do you use a VPN to download free and publicly available iso images? (Ubuntu). Just curious. Do you download directly from a mirror or use BitTorrent for this? (If the latter I think I kind of understand the rationale for the VPN)
Probably because of this - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/fake-dmca-takedown-n...
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#19Props 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…
Why do you use a VPN to download free and publicly available iso images? (Ubuntu). Just curious. Do you download directly from a mirror or use BitTorrent for this? (If the latter I think I kind of understand the rationale for the VPN)
linux iso is code for pirated content
Re: Apple's iCloud+ “VPN”
#20Props 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…
Why do you use a VPN to download free and publicly available iso images? (Ubuntu). Just curious. Do you download directly from a mirror or use BitTorrent for this? (If the latter I think I kind of understand the rationale for the VPN)
“Ubuntu ISOs” is a common euphemism for pirated content like media or games.