US carriers block iCloud private relay, carriers and Apple deny

headless said that some iPhone users in the United States reported that iCloud private relay had stopped working, and there was speculation that carriers might have blocked it, but both carriers and Apple shared this view. (The Verge article, Ars Technica article, Mac Rumors article, 9to5Mac article).

iCloud Private Relay is a privacy-enhancing feature available when you or someone in your Family Sharing group has an iCloud+ subscription, and is currently available as a beta feature on iOS 15 / iPadOS 15. In Europe, it was immediately reported that major carriers had jointly requested the European Commission to restrict private relays, and it was suspected that the carriers blocked it.

However, Verizon and AT&T deny blocking private relays. T-Mobile said it can't enable private relay if you're using a carrier's filtering service. He also explained that a bug in iOS 15.2 reset the settings to turn it off when upgrading, but the bug has since been dismissed.

Apple also denied resetting settings when upgrading, and said it would not be blocked by carriers. However, the US support documentation adds what to do if private relay is disabled on a particular network.

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