I was foolishly relying on Private Relay. Now I’ll have to find a reliable VPN.
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Private VPN Service Recommendations and Comparison, No Sponsors or Ads - Privacy Guides If you are not a torrent user. Else you need port forwarding.
How does that help in hiding your IP address?
I get what she’s saying. For torrents, you’d need a VPN and port forwarding. Torrents require that there be a (configurable) port forwarded so that you can connect properly to the torrent network. If a VPN doesn’t offer that service, then you’re going to have a Very Hard Time trying to download/upload.
And port forwarding isn’t a given with VPN services. You’d presumably need to find one other than the ones in the link she posted.
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If I recall correctly, there was a rather lengthy thread not too long ago about VPNs. My interpretation from that is that by and large, VPNs are really not that good at protecting one’s identity and working online. I don’t particularly care that much given the benign nature of my internet work, except for the spam and advertising related exposure, which with AI, I presume is and will be much worst.
Did I misunderstand the value of VPNs? I ask because for a while I was using ExpressVPN but have cancelled the service thinking it provided little addition privacy since I use Private Relay.
a VPN is for all your internet traffic, private relay is just for safari and mail.
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What @aardy said, with the addition that not being able to identify your IP address is different from not being able to identify you.
A VPN:
- Prevents your ISP from being able to tell what you’re doing online (other than, obviously, connecting to a VPN
) - Lumps all of your Internet traffic together on a single IP with a number of other users, making it a more difficult for data aggregators to sort out
- As a side benefit of the lumping your Internet traffic onto a different IP, it also allows you to bounce your IP around to different countries in case that’s a benefit to you
A VPN does not
- Prevent browser fingerprinting
- Prevent you from being identified when you log into a website (username/password)
- Prevent cookies being stored on your computer that can potentially identify you
The issue here is that apparently while Apple does do the VPN stuff above for Safari and Mail, there are incidental cases (passkeys) where your computer makes requests that don’t go through the private relay - which leaks your IP.
If the VPN benefits listed above are important to you, you need a VPN. Ideally a VPN with a “kill switch” that blocks all Internet traffic if the VPN disconnects. The second category of stuff is probably the larger privacy issue, which isn’t helped by either Apple Private Relay or a VPN.
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Does the 1Blocker app VPN provide more security for Safari or Mail?
In my experience, VPNs can cause issues with some websites some of the time. Private Relay can make some websites unusable quite often.
+1
I had to disable private relay this afternoon, in order to log into my supplemental health insurance provider.
You can always buy a cheap VPS with as low as 500MB of RAM and host your own VPN, just for yourself (and maybe friends and family). Since you are the only user of the VPS IP address, you tend to see fewer anti-bot screens than when you use a commercial VPN provider like Proton or Nord. Setup is fairly straightforward if you are somewhat familiar with the CLI (or with prompting AI dev tools).
You’ll use a third-party app, such as Shadowrocket, to connect with your VPN. These third-party apps let you customize routing, for example: skip VPN for mybank.com; use VPN for reddit.com; skip VPN for insurance.health; block crypto.com; use VPN for all other domains. So, no need to switch it on and off for different scenarios.
As of reliability and privacy, it depends on the VPS provider of your choice.
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Then you still have a unique IP address…
(But at least it doesn’t have to be tied to your real physical location)
Thank you. This summary is helpful and appreciated. 
Indeed. Whether that’s useful depends on your threat model. Self-hosting is solid if you just want to prevent your carrier or Wi-Fi operator from scooping on your traffic.
Any VPN is probably not sufficient to prevent Big Corps from profiling you, unless you stay logged out of all their services.
I just want chime in to say that @webwalrus’ post above should be read by everybody.
Regarding Apple’s Private Relay: It may have its issues, and it is being criticized rightfully so. I am quite sure that Apple will keep improving it and learn from the mistakes. And no matter what: built-in tools are always nice to have. No matter what solution: the internet protocol and the information available to web browsers that have to be available to third parties, too, always will lead to a situation where there is no absolute privacy, no matter what. By design. It can’t be done.
We can try to make it difficult to be identified, but that is all we can do. There is a reason why whistleblowers use “throw-away devices” and so on to do their thing.
Enable the privacy options you can, maybe use a DNS service that blocks stuff (like NextDNS), and then check https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
You get the message “Our tests indicate that you have strong protection against Web tracking”?
If so, move on.
If you need a VPN because you do not want your ISP or others in your network to know what you are doing online or if you want to access something that is being blocked in your neck of the woods, go for a VPN. But you will have to trust the VPN providers because they will get to know those things others will not any longer… I do not get this ongoing rush to use VPNs run by unknown providers with unknown background. Just crazy… 
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I’m not sure how long VPNs will remain private for individuals. Even Switzerland has been considering changing their surveillance laws to require user identification and data retention for digital services with over 5,000 users.
The bottom line is this - if they want to find you, they will find you. Period.
Check out some of Steve Rambam’s videos from old Hope hacker cons. Privacy Is Dead, Get Used To It.
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You have a really negative opinion of our privacy, and I agree with you. IMO privacy these days is an illusion that Apple and countless other companies use as a marketing tool.
When I turned 50 years old, before the “turn of the century”, I got birthday cards from AARP and some other companies that week. That meant that my name, address, and birthday were public knowledge even then. Imagine what data brokers know about us now.
I was actually just quoting the title of Rambam’s presentation…
I think it’s more like a very steep hill. On the bottom is “everybody knows everything about everybody else,” and on the top you have “nobody knows anything unless you’ve explicitly informed them.”
And because it’s a steep hill, it takes significant, active effort to get further toward the top. The default is to slide further down.
We’re not all the way on the bottom, but we’re a lot closer than most people realize. Companies like Apple are taking (at least some) steps to prevent the slide, and (possibly) trying to climb up a tiny bit. But the difference is, Apple knows how far down we’ve gotten. The average consumer likely thinks we’re in the top 1/4 of the hill or so.
I would suggest that, oddly enough, the fact that people think there’s still significant privacy that can be preserved - whether or not that’s correct - is more likely to incentivize them to act in a way that’s good for privacy overall.
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