Private browsing

>Initially available as a beta-test, Safari’s new Private Relay service is intended as a feature of iCloud+. Before you can use it in Safari, open the Apple ID pane and enable it in the iCloud section there. Note though that this isn’t a full VPN service.

When you want to load a webpage, Safari’s request is encrypted and passes into the Private Relay service in iCloud. There it’s sent through two separate relays; the first anonymises your IP address to hide it from the website you’re connecting to. The second relay decrypts the destination address and forwards the request to the website. Together these two steps are intended to prevent the remote website or service that you’re connecting to from discovering your IP address, location, or details of your browsing history, information which Apple says it too can’t intercept. Although this generally works well, as your connection may appear as if it’s being made from a different country to the one you live in, some online services may be denied if they’re restricted to specific countries. A few websites don’t like this, and you’ll need to disable the Private Relay service to access them. Apple is working on improvements to reduce these problems before releasing the full service.