Following the recent revelation that Apple’s iCloud Private Relay appears to have been disabled by wireless carriers Sprint and T-Mobile, T-Mobile offered the following statement to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, in which it stated that iOS 15.2 device settings that default to the feature being toggled off, and that Apple has been contacted. T-Mobile explicitly says that iCloud relay has not been blocked:
Overnight our team identified that in the 15.2 iOS release, some device settings default to the feature being toggled off. We have shared this with Apple. This is not specific to T-Mobile. Again though, we have not broadly blocked iCloud Private
T-Mobile has stated that some subscribers who are using plans and features with content filtering are not able to access iCloud Private Relay, though 9to5Mac claims that some of the users unable to access iCloud Private Relay do not have content filtering enabled:
Customers who chose plans and features with content filtering (e.g. parent controls) do not have access to the iCloud Private Relay to allow these services to work as designed. All other customers have no restrictions.
Given T-Mobile’s comments, it seems that the issue stems from certain features being disabled by default, and that the iCloud Private Relay is not being explicitly blocked for T-Mobile customers.
Apple has in turn updated its iCloud Private Relay support document to clarify how users can make sure that iCloud Private Relay is enabled for a cellular network in iOS 15.2 by going to Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options and ensuring that “Limit IP Address Tracking” is turned on.
In the U.S., AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have not spoken out against iCloud Private Relay nor have they suggested U.S. networks won’t support the feature.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via MacRumors, @markgurman, and support.apple.com