Talk:Apple iCloud Private Relay

We are looking for answers to the following questions:

• Are you seeing problems related to the current iCloud Private Relay global blocks on your wiki?
• Do you think that it's likely that good-faith editors will be affected by blocks?
• While we do not know for sure, we think that this situation may grow over the next couple of years. It is possible that other browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, could follow a similar pattern and also restrict access to IP addresses. If this happens, it will be a major change in how the internet works. What do you think, in what ways would this change affect the wikis?

Write in any language you are comfortable with. Thank you!

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Blocked editors?

On the question Do you think that it's likely that good-faith editors will be blocked?:

No editor is blocked here, but a set of proxy ranges. Affected (not blocked) editors will be able to continue editing through other browsers, it does not affect the Wikipedia iOS app. It will not affect users who disable Apple iCloud Private Relay either (and there are good privacy reasons to disable it). So, to have a more fruitful discussion, we should discuss the exact circumstances in which editors are affected (not blocked), and what are the different ways to mitigate it, and instructions we can give them. MarioGom (talk) 09:10, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

I cannot stress this enough, and I think it's important to frame this debate correctly when it comes to discussing these blocks. I have made somewhere around 1200 rangeblocks of webhosting providers in the last 5 weeks or so. Not one of them was targeted at a user. Blocks of webhosts and other anonymisers are a purely technical matter; the only block targets they have are server racks standing in some industrial facility, not the people using them. The only thing a VPN user needs to do in order to edit is to turn off the proxy. iCloud Private Relay is more or less functionally equivalent to a VPN service (though there are some implementation differences), and considering the crucial role IPs play for our current (and lackluster) anti-abuse tooling (and hence the substantial damage anonymisers do), we have no choice but to block it. The important question is how we can communicate these blocks in a way where affected users are fully informed about why they were blocked, and how they can disable the relay to continue editing. Blablubbs (talk) 10:42, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

On Chrome and Firefox

About Chrome and Firefox also restrict access to IP addresses:

Do we have any information that suggests that Google and Mozilla will be enabling a VPN/proxy for their users by default? I'm not aware of such plans. And if they do, I doubt it will be enabled by default, and without a way to add site exclusions. If Google had plans to route all their users' traffic through their servers by default, I would urge you to oppose this change, as it will eventually lead to a major privacy issue, see en:PRISM (surveillance program). MarioGom (talk) 09:14, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

IPv6

With the advent of IPv6, IP addresses are more dynamic than before. This problem will only be worse in the future as more users come online.

The document mentions IPv6, but I'm not sure how it is related to iCloud Private Relay at all. Also, is there any evidence that IPv6 (/64 ranges) are more dynamic than IPv4? It might be more dynamic for some ISPs, and it might be less dynamic for other ISPs. But the overall assessment that it will be more dynamic seems somewhat counter-intuitive. MarioGom (talk) 10:08, 17 October 2021 (UTC)