Apple had made a lot of announcements yesterday and among them, the new iCloud+ is major update. This new service will bring new features alongside standard iCloud storage, so, iCloud+ will include three new features: Private Relay, Hide My Email and HomeKit Secure Video.
Private Relay is obviously the headlining feature of the iCloud+ that ensures all the traffic leaving your device is encrypted and is sent through two separate relays. The Cupertino giant assures that not even Apple, can access or view this data, looks more like a Google VPN baked in Google One subscription.
Private Relay is a new internet privacy service that’s built right into iCloud, allowing users to connect to and browse the web in a more secure and private way. When browsing with Safari, Private Relay ensures all traffic leaving a user’s device is encrypted, so no one between the user and the website they are visiting can access and read it, not even Apple or the user’s network provider. All the user’s requests are then sent through two separate internet relays.
The first assigns the user an anonymous IP address that maps to their region but not their actual location. The second decrypts the web address they want to visit and forwards them to their destination. This separation of information protects the user’s privacy because no single entity can identify both who a user is and which sites they visit.
However, the interesting feature which you will enjoy is the new Hide My Email, which allows users to Sign in With Apple with randomized, unique emails that forward to your main account. This feature will be built into Mail, Safari, and other services, so you can now easily hide your original email from services for increased privacy.
Expanding on the capabilities of Sign in with Apple, Hide My Email lets users share unique, random email addresses that forward to their personal inbox anytime they wish to keep their personal email address private. Built directly into Safari, iCloud settings, and Mail, Hide My Email also enables users to create and delete as many addresses as needed at any time, helping give users control of who is able to contact them.
Another great addition to iCloud+ is unlimited HomeKit Secure Video cameras; currently, iCloud users were limited to just five cameras per account; now, this limit has completely been removed for iCloud+. Additionally, Apple will use end-to-end encryption for securing your home security footage that will never be counted against your iCloud storage space.
iCloud+ expands built-in support for HomeKit Secure Video, so users can connect more cameras than ever before in the Home app, while giving them end-to-end encrypted storage for home security video footage that will not count against their storage capacity. HomeKit Secure Video also ensures that activity detected by users’ security cameras is analyzed and encrypted by their Apple devices at home before being securely stored in iCloud.
The best part is the iCloud+ will be offered to all the iCloud users at no additional cost, which means you get added new features just paying $0.99 per month for 50GB of storage. You can also add to add one HomeKit Secure Video Camera and up to 2TB of storage with unlimited secure video cameras by paying $9.99 per month.
