T-Mobile says it hasn’t disabled iCloud Private Relay for its subscriber, despite the recent reports saying the carrier is preventing iPhone owners from turning on the feature.
In a statement to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, T-Mobile said that iOS 15.2 device settings default to the feature being toggled off and that they have shared the info with Apple. They have “not broadly blocked iCloud Private.”
T-Mobile: “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”
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) January 11, 2022
Yesterday, there were reports that T-Mobiel was blocking its iPhone users from enabling iCloud Private Relay in the United States, which should be available to all iOS 15.2 users.
The article was initiated by a handful of reports from T-Mobile subscribers saying they were unable to turn on iCloud Private Relay and were receiving a message that it was disabled for their carrier.
T-Mobile has since told 9to5Mac that while some subscribers who are using plans and features with content filtering are not able to access iCloud Private Relay, the Magenta carrier claims that some of the users that are 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.
Based on T-Mobile’s comment, the issue is apparently linked to content filtering and a problem with certain features being disabled by default.
Apple today 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.
Users and observers were concerned over the possibility of T-Mobile’s possibly blocking iCloud Private Relay, as European carriers had joined together to restrict the feature because it “networks and servers from accessing vital network data and metadata, including those operators in charge of the connectivity.”
However, U.S. carriers including, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have not spoken out against iCloud Private Relay nor have they suggested their networks will lack support for the feature.
