At the WWDC 2021 conference this week for software developers, Apple announced several privacy-focused updates. Top of which was One called Private Relay particularly piques the interest of Ugandans and other countries like China where there is a level of internet censorship, for it encrypts all browsing history so nobody can track or intercept the data.
The little we know about how Private Relay works in such away that when it is turned on, nobody can track one’s browsing history — not your internet service provider, anyone standing in the middle of your request between your device and the server you’re requesting information from. We’ll have to wait a bit to learn more about how in depth.
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Apple told Reuters that Private Relay won’t be available in Uganda alongside Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, China and the Philippines.
The major culprit here is Virtual private networks or VPNs which are popular tools for users in Uganda especially after the 2016 and 2021 presidential elections were used to bypass government censorship apparatus, accessing web services that are otherwise blocked (like Facebook) or slowed down. Uganda is among the countries in the world with high VPN usage according to Apple. But VPNs don’t necessarily protect users’ privacy because they simply funnel all the traffic through VPN providers’ servers instead of users’ internet providers, so users are essentially entrusting VPN firms with protecting their identities. Private Relay, on the other hand, doesn’t even allow Apple to see one’s browsing activity. So this is the main reason why Ugandan Apple users will not enjoy this feature.
What is not clear is whether Private Relay will simply be excluded from system upgrades for users in Uganda and the other countries where it’s restricted, or it will be blocked by internet providers in those regions.
