Apple’s iCloud Private Relay, which helps protect paid iCloud users from online trackers, has experienced outages affecting major markets, restricting users from accessing web services and apps that use internet connectivity.
TechCrunch understands that iCloud Private Relay’s downtime has affected some Apple users in markets including Europe, India Japan, and the United States since at least Thursday. The sporadic outages are restricting users from accessing the web on the Safari browser and reporting internet connectivity issues on installed apps.
Apple’s System Status web page confirms the latest iCloud Private Relay outage and mentions that the service might be “slow or unavailable” for some users.
Launched in 2021 specifically for iCloud+ subscribers, iCloud Private Relay helps protect Apple users from online trackers by encrypting traffic going through customer devices. The DNS service sends requests using two separate internet relays to restrict web trackers and internet service providers to profile users by combining their IP addresses, location and browsing activity. It uses the Oblivious DNS-over-HTTPS protocol that Apple designed in collaboration with Cloudflare in 2020.
If you are affected by the ongoing iCloud Private Relay outage, you can temporarily switch off the service by going to Settings > Profile > iCloud > Private Relay.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
