Matthew GreenOne of the most interesting recent privacy developments is the deployment of big two-hop IP blinding VPNs by companies like Apple and Google. These systems are designed to ensure that even those companies can’t link web requests to IP addresses.
For example, Apple has iCloud Private Relay for Safari browsing. The first “hop” is a server run by Apple itself, so Apple sees IP addresses. But web connections get relayed to a second VPN provider that isn’t Apple: hence Apple can’t link source IPs to destination servers.
It’s not just Apple. Google has their own system in the “Privacy Sandbox” that goes by the (less cool) moniker “IP protection”. (Come on Google, get a better marketing team.) It’s experimental and was linked to Chrome, although they seem to have deprecated that integration (but not the service.) https://privacysandbox.google.com/protections/ip-protection
Anyway, the current usage for both systems is web browsing (although Google seems to have given up on that.) But companies are also using this to add privacy to their own internal services, presumably things like Find My and (maybe) Siri and Apple’s PCC or Google’s new private ML inference service. https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-private-ai-compute/
I’m fascinated by these services for a reason: this is the first time that major companies have taken a stand on adding IP privacy to their offerings. It’s as big a deal as the rise of end-to-end encryption or TLS, but everyone noticed those things. Nobody is talking about this.
Also, what makes IP hiding services feasible today is the economics of the thing. With peering agreements and the extremely low bandwidth costs big tech cos can access, using 50GB/mo of Private Relay probably costs less than $1 in ingress/egress charges. Apple charges $1-10.
PS I did a search to see if there are any public court documents talking about Private Relay, and the closest I found is one CSAM case involving a defendant who used Private Relay, but was caught due to logging into an Adobe service. https://insidelake.com/2023/08/11/geek-squad-manager-arrested-on-more-than-30-charges-involving-child-pornography/
Geek Squad Manager Arrested on more than 30 Charges Involving Child Pornography - Inside Lake
FRUITLAND PARK, Florida—A Fruitland Park man is facing more two dozen counts of possession of child pornography and six counts of transmitting pornography after a search warrant revealed numerous images in his Adobe account, according to a probable cause affidavit. Acting on a tip from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC,) Fruitland Park Police Department began investigating a report that eight images of child pornography were uploaded to an Adobe account belonging to David Michael Frisby, 37, on Dec. 18, 2022. A search warrant revealed 571 photos in his account including the eight photos that began the […]
lj·rk@matthew_d_green While I think that this development is good in itself, I'm not so sure it marks a deviation from their policies. They noticed that, legally, having all this data just "end up" at their servers is a liability they don't want to take. It's also possibly a PR problem, if they get subpoena'd to hand it over.
They still love our data -- but they rather collect things through Google Accounts, i.e., tied to an identity and something "we" more or less consciously "give" them. This data is much less of a problem because it is necessary to fulfill their contractual obligations and no-one can hate on them for handing the data out to law enforcement.
lynn@matthew_d_green I imagine part of it must be that it's for browsing in safari only. It's neat, but I imagine the people who care about using The Best VPN also care about what browser they use and about IP leaks.
Nick Foster@matthew_d_green yes, Apple charges $1-$10, but it’s worth noting that it’s bundled with other services
Almost everyone I know pays for at least the $0.99 tier of iCloud storage, and I suspect most of them have Private Relay turned out without even realizing it. Defaults are powerful
Eric deRuiter@matthew_d_green Private relay also works for unencrypted non Safari traffic from other apps.
🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦@matthew_d_green Private Relay is also used by Apple Mail in some cases (iCloud and maybe others) which can cause mail admins headaches.
.:. brainsik@matthew_d_green I wish it was system-wide, not just web browsing. So much of our traffic is via apps. I don’t really understand why it’s the one use case. I thought it was bandwidth related, but so many people watch Netflix and YouTube in their browser, maybe not?
Anisse@matthew_d_green IP protection is being discontinued with most of the rest of privacy sandbox.
@Aissen It’s being discontinued for Chrome but they’re still using these tools internally I believe.
@matthew_d_green what do you mean using it internally? Like a corporate VPN for outbound connections?
@Aissen Inbound stuff like private inference.
"Musty Bits" McGee@matthew_d_green @Aissen ....so what's the upshot for users?
Frederik Braun �@matthew_d_green The tech is also cool. I think it's essentially MASQUE (Multiplexed Application Substrate over QUIC Encryption), isn't it?