GUANGZHOU, China — Apple’s new characteristic designed to provide customers extra privateness when looking the net won’t be obtainable in China, one of many iPhone maker’s most necessary markets.

Apple revealed a brand new service known as iCloud+ at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday. One of the options included in that’s “Private Relay.”

When customers browse the web utilizing Safari, their knowledge will probably be despatched by way of two separate servers as a way to masks the consumer’s id and what websites they’re visiting. As a outcome, even Apple or the consumer’s community supplier can’t see that knowledge.

It’s a bit like a digital non-public community (VPN) the place customers can route their web visitors by way of a server positioned elsewhere on the earth to masks their looking exercise.

China so-called Great Firewall successfully permits authorities to dam web sites from being accessed inside China together with Google and Facebook. VPNs are sometimes used to get round China’s strict web controls.

An Apple spokesperson informed CNBC that Private Relay won’t work in China and another nations together with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Belarus and Uganda.

Apple stated it couldn’t provide the characteristic in these nations as a consequence of native legal guidelines.

Using unauthorized VPNs to entry blocked web sites is illegitimate in China. While Apple’s Private Relay shouldn’t be technically a VPN, it acts in an analogous approach.

In 2017, the U.S. know-how large removed a number of VPN services from its China App Store to adjust to native rules.