⚓ T289795 Understand impact of Apple's Relay Service

⚓ T289795 Understand impact of Apple's Relay Service
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T289795
Understand impact of Apple's Relay Service
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Assigned To
MMiller_WMF
Authored By
JMinor
Aug 26 2021, 4:37 PM
2021-08-26 16:37:23 (UTC+0)
Tags
Wikipedia-iOS-App-Backlog
(Product Backlog)
User-Johan
(Backlog)
Analytics-Radar
(Radar - Watching)
Product-Analytics
(Epics)
Fundraising-Backlog
(Blocked or not fr-tech)
Performance-Team (Radar)
(Watching)
Referenced Files
F34650108: image2.png
Sep 21 2021, 6:41 PM
2021-09-21 18:41:49 (UTC+0)
F34650111: image0.png
Sep 21 2021, 6:41 PM
2021-09-21 18:41:49 (UTC+0)
F34650109: image3.png
Sep 21 2021, 6:41 PM
2021-09-21 18:41:49 (UTC+0)
F34650110: image1.png
Sep 21 2021, 6:41 PM
2021-09-21 18:41:49 (UTC+0)
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4nn1l2
Aklapper
alaa
Amorymeltzer
Andrew_Davidson
AntiCompositeNumber
Base
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Description
In the most recent OS updates (
iOS 15, iPad OS 15 released on Sept 20, 2021
) and the upcoming Mac OS 12 (likely to be released in mid-late October 2021) Apple has created a new service for users of iCloud to anonymize their internet requests. Although not a VPN service, the impact is similar, in that users IPs will no longer be transmitted with requests, instead an IP from Apple's service will be used. Initially this feature will be in "Beta", even when the rest of the OS is released, but it will be available on all apple devices, and will impact both desktop and mobile traffic.
Given that IPs are a primary signal and only way to prevent repeated account creation and sock-puppetry, this means many Wikis will likely need to or will at least consider blocking all edits from Apple's IPs, as we do with VPN. English Wikipedia has already discussed this
here
Because this is a new feature for Apple it is not clear how big the uptake and impact here will be. The goal of this task is to estimate how severe these impacts might be to determine what if any mitigation strategies or conversations are needed.
Below are questions we intend to answer, all in service of understanding the potential loss in editors and edits from a wholesale block of these users, and to come up with ways to allow those users to easily continue contributing.
Analytics questions
T292103: Measure of potential impact of Apple's Relay service on Editors and Edits
T292106: Analyze impact of Beta rollout of Apple's Relay service on editing activity & IP blocks
T292104: Analyze iOS upgrade patterns to estimate potential timeline for Apple's Relay service adoption
Market info
[Roughly from public info] What proportion of Apple editors are iCloud users?
[Roughly from expertise/past experience/public info] what proportion of iCloud users are likely to use this feature?
User experience
: Given our issues with unclear, undisplayed or unusable block messages, what user experience will these editors have when they try to edit after installing the OS update?
Community
: Is the IP exemption policy and admins dealing with IP exemptions aware of this change and able to handle additional requests? What would their general stance to these requests be?
References
Superset: Edit Attempts by Browser and OS
Related Objects
Search...
Task Graph
Mentions
Status
Subtype
Assigned
Task
Resolved
MMiller_WMF
T289795
Understand impact of Apple's Relay Service
Resolved
nettrom_WMF
T292103
Measure of potential impact of Apple's Relay service on Editors and Edits
Resolved
SNowick_WMF
T292104
Analyze iOS upgrade patterns to estimate potential timeline for Apple's Relay service adoption
Resolved
nettrom_WMF
T292106
Analyze impact of Beta rollout of Apple's Relay service on editing activity & IP blocks
Resolved
sgrabarczuk
T292524
Community Relations support for the iCloud Relay situation
Mentioned In
T298061: Investigate drops in non-bot edits
T293288: IP Info and Apple iCloud Relay
T292449: Revisit approach to automated bot detection
T270786: Newcomer tasks: NEWTEA revisited
T285588: Investigate iOS 15's impact on VE (mobile and desktop)
Mentioned Here
T292103: Measure of potential impact of Apple's Relay service on Editors and Edits
T292104: Analyze iOS upgrade patterns to estimate potential timeline for Apple's Relay service adoption
T292106: Analyze impact of Beta rollout of Apple's Relay service on editing activity & IP blocks
Event Timeline
There are a very large number of changes, so older changes are hidden.
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Maryana
added a comment.
Sep 21 2021, 6:41 PM
2021-09-21 18:41:49 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
Apple testers are reporting that it's not just logged out users who are impacted – it appears logged in users on Relay may not be able to edit, either. Is there a way for us to reproduce this?
Screenshots sent over from Apple (attempting to edit a non-protected page on mobile web) below:
ovasileva
subscribed.
Sep 21 2021, 7:24 PM
2021-09-21 19:24:02 (UTC+0)
JMinor
removed
SNowick_WMF
as the assignee of this task.
Sep 21 2021, 7:30 PM
2021-09-21 19:30:22 (UTC+0)
JMinor
raised the priority of this task from
Medium
to
High
JMinor
added a comment.
Sep 21 2021, 7:34 PM
2021-09-21 19:34:59 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
Confirmed this does not affect iOS app editing, anonymous or logged in only Safari.
Johan
added a comment.
Edited
Sep 21 2021, 7:35 PM
2021-09-21 19:35:09 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
Most logged-in editors will not be able to edit from a blocked IP. A fairly small minority are not affected, e.g. admins and users who have specifically requested to be able to edit from blocked IPs if logged in (a request they have to file from a different IP, one that isn't blocked, and which might not be granted to newcomers). Generally an IP block will block all users, registered or not.
Niharika
subscribed.
Edited
Sep 21 2021, 9:16 PM
2021-09-21 21:16:40 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
Which projects (aside from Portuguese Wikipedia) currently disallow anonymous editing?
I have verified with
@jwang
(AHT team) that Portugese Wikipedia is currently the only wiki that disallows anonymous editing.
@SNowick_WMF
Last week Farsi Wikipedia also made the decision to block anonymous editing. I am not 100% sure if they already did it -- last I heard they were working on making the technical changes needed for the block.
DLynch
added subscribers:
Urbanecm
DLynch
Sep 21 2021, 11:05 PM
2021-09-21 23:05:58 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
I was talking with
@Urbanecm
about this around mid-August, and they did some log-analysis. At that time, ~30% of beta users of iOS 15 visiting wikipedias were using Private Relay. That's perhaps a high-water mark, as I'd suspect that the sort of person who installs a beta OS is also relatively more-likely to be paying Apple for extra storage.
Someone with the appropriate access to logs could rerun
the script
to check how these numbers are looking post-launch. (Though since Relay is heavily flagged as being still-in-beta, I'd guess it'd skew lower than wherever it's going to settle out come 15.1/15.2.)
Samwalton9-WMF
subscribed.
Sep 22 2021, 4:36 PM
2021-09-22 16:36:01 (UTC+0)
Isaac
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Sep 22 2021, 5:43 PM
2021-09-22 17:43:31 (UTC+0)
JAllemandou
added a project:
Analytics
Sep 22 2021, 6:05 PM
2021-09-22 18:05:59 (UTC+0)
JAllemandou
subscribed.
Comment Actions
Flagging Analytics as IPs are used to flag readers as automated or not.
RoySmith
subscribed.
Sep 22 2021, 6:19 PM
2021-09-22 18:19:33 (UTC+0)
DLynch
added a comment.
Sep 22 2021, 8:42 PM
2021-09-22 20:42:36 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
I would suspect that these IPs wouldn't be producing many (any?) automated actions, as inherently any requests from them should be coming from inside a Safari browser.
Urbanecm
added a comment.
Sep 22 2021, 9:10 PM
2021-09-22 21:10:39 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
In
T289795#7373088
@DLynch
wrote:
I would suspect that these IPs wouldn't be producing many (any?) automated actions, as inherently any requests from them should be coming from inside a Safari browser.
Plus the script from above checks user agents, too. Or maybe I miss something?
Base
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Sep 22 2021, 9:11 PM
2021-09-22 21:11:00 (UTC+0)
Base
added a comment.
Sep 22 2021, 9:15 PM
2021-09-22 21:15:10 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
Generally an IP block will block all users, registered or not.
This depends on block settings, but blocks under No open proxies policy indeed are generally for both logged in and anonymous users.
Sakretsu
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Sep 24 2021, 11:47 AM
2021-09-24 11:47:56 (UTC+0)
ppelberg
added a subscriber:
MNeisler
Sep 24 2021, 4:28 PM
2021-09-24 16:28:54 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
Note: I've added a link to the
Edit Attempts by Browser and OS
Superset dashboard
@MNeisler
created to the task description for easy reference.
ppelberg
updated the task description.
(Show Details)
Sep 24 2021, 4:29 PM
2021-09-24 16:29:22 (UTC+0)
Stang
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2021-09-25 14:13:57 (UTC+0)
SCP-2000
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Sep 25 2021, 3:16 PM
2021-09-25 15:16:16 (UTC+0)
MMiller_WMF
updated the task description.
(Show Details)
Sep 27 2021, 5:26 AM
2021-09-27 05:26:56 (UTC+0)
MMiller_WMF
added a subscriber:
kzimmerman
Comment Actions
I just re-organized the description to clarify actionable analytics questions. We will figure out this week how to resource answering those questions.
odimitrijevic
edited projects, added
Analytics-Radar
; removed
Analytics
Sep 27 2021, 4:21 PM
2021-09-27 16:21:02 (UTC+0)
JMinor
updated the task description.
(Show Details)
Sep 27 2021, 7:30 PM
2021-09-27 19:30:02 (UTC+0)
JMinor
updated the task description.
(Show Details)
Isaac
added a comment.
Sep 27 2021, 9:13 PM
2021-09-27 21:13:49 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
I would suspect that these IPs wouldn't be producing many (any?) automated actions, as inherently any requests from them should be coming from inside a Safari browser.
Plus the script from above checks user agents, too. Or maybe I miss something?
@DLynch
@Urbanecm
what
@JAllemandou
was referring to was Data Engineering's approach to identifying "sneaky" bots -- i.e. bots that don't declare themselves obviously via the user-agent information (
wikitech:BotDetection
). Specifically, if more than 800 pageviews come from the same IP address + user-agent in a 24-hour window (there are a few other similar checks), these requests are flagged as
automated
code
) and filtered out of most of our reader metrics. If Safari (and more browsers presumably) begin adopting this technology, you might see more actual human readers sharing the same IP+UA fingerprint and potentially being labeled as
automated
. Obviously this issue is not specific to Apple -- any increase in VPN usage could trigger the same issue -- and maybe the pageview metrics concerns are sufficiently different from the editor-oriented ones in this task, but it is worth flagging that these changes could lead to the bot detection code began returning more false positives and that would lead to corresponding (false) drops in pageview metrics.
4nn1l2
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Sep 27 2021, 10:22 PM
2021-09-27 22:22:01 (UTC+0)
AntiCompositeNumber
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GeneralNotability
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Edited
Sep 28 2021, 2:28 AM
2021-09-28 02:28:36 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
Comment from enwiki - we routinely hardblock open proxies, including CDNs being used as proxies, which is why
@Maryana
was blocked from editing. Cloudflare already has Cloudflare WARP, and earlier data indicated that Cloudflare, Fastly, and Akamai were all possible exit points for Private Relay traffic, they are all on our block-open-ranges-on-sight list. We have made a specific block template for these services, but we haven't gone through and reblocked all of the known Private Relay exits using that template yet. Related discussion on enwiki from a few months ago can be found at
. If it helps anyone, a list of current egress points can be found at
(credit to
@Urbanecm
for showing that to me)
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ldelench_wmf
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Needs Investigation
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Product-Analytics (Kanban)
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Sep 28 2021, 5:08 PM
2021-09-28 17:08:07 (UTC+0)
ldelench_wmf
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Product-Analytics
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ldelench_wmf
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Epics
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mpopov
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nettrom_WMF
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T270786: Newcomer tasks: NEWTEA revisited
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Comment Actions
@Base
: “but blocks under No open proxies policy indeed are generally for both logged in and anonymous users”
@GeneralNotability
: “enwiki - we routinely hardblock open proxies, including CDNs being used as proxies”
This should change. If I'm logged-in, why can't I edit from anywhere?
(I'm not an iCloud+ subscriber, but I've been affected by IP hardblocks before. Can someone change the description to say “iCloud+“ instead of “iCloud”, please?)
AntiCompositeNumber
added a comment.
Sep 30 2021, 7:40 PM
2021-09-30 19:40:41 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
The specific reasons for hardblocking are a bit
BEANSy
to describe on a public task, but suffice it to say that denying most editors the use of open or anonymizing proxies, including commercial VPNs, is necessary to prevent serious abuse. Editors who have a legitimate reason to use open or anonymizing proxies may request IP block exemption.
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2021-10-04 10:47:05 (UTC+0)
Isaac
mentioned this in
T292449: Revisit approach to automated bot detection
Oct 4 2021, 3:32 PM
2021-10-04 15:32:44 (UTC+0)
sgrabarczuk
added a subtask:
T292524: Community Relations support for the iCloud Relay situation
Oct 5 2021, 12:53 PM
2021-10-05 12:53:10 (UTC+0)
Krinkle
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Watching
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Performance-Team (Radar)
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We (the Product department, Wikimedia Foundation) are working on an announcement. Within a week, we'll post it on Meta-Wiki, and within two weeks, promote it across the communities. Thank you!
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Niharika
mentioned this in
T293288: IP Info and Apple iCloud Relay
Oct 13 2021, 6:11 PM
2021-10-13 18:11:22 (UTC+0)
AntiCompositeNumber
added a comment.
Oct 17 2021, 4:13 AM
2021-10-17 04:13:05 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
In
T289795#7408864
@sgrabarczuk
wrote:
We (the Product department, Wikimedia Foundation) are working on an announcement. Within a week, we'll post it on Meta-Wiki, and within two weeks, promote it across the communities. Thank you!
, for anyone else looking for it.
MarioGom
added a comment.
Oct 17 2021, 9:22 AM
2021-10-17 09:22:29 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
Thanks for the update
@AntiCompositeNumber
. I have posted some thoughts at
but before this is announced more widely, I think it should be improved. For example, it should talk about affected editors, not blocked editors. No editor is blocked here, they are affected by an IP block under some circumstances, and there are many ways for them to continue editing (some have been discussed above in this ticket).
Also it conflates some privacy features such as User-Agent masking in Chrome, with opt-out VPN built into a browser. Are you aware of Google or Mozilla planning to route all their users' traffic through their servers by default? I'm not. I doubt that will happen. So it's not helpful for the discussion.
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TheDJ
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Comment Actions
In
T289795#7382434
@GeneralNotability
wrote:
a list of current egress points can be found at
(credit to
@Urbanecm
for showing that to me)
Just a note that while some reports by Apple made it sound as if these ranges they advertised are exclusively leased to Apple, there is real world data that suggests they are NOT exclusive:
Seems important.
nettrom_WMF
closed subtask
T292103: Measure of potential impact of Apple's Relay service on Editors and Edits
as
Resolved
Oct 25 2021, 11:32 PM
2021-10-25 23:32:29 (UTC+0)
nettrom_WMF
closed subtask
T292106: Analyze impact of Beta rollout of Apple's Relay service on editing activity & IP blocks
as
Resolved
SNowick_WMF
closed subtask
T292104: Analyze iOS upgrade patterns to estimate potential timeline for Apple's Relay service adoption
as
Resolved
Oct 26 2021, 8:52 PM
2021-10-26 20:52:23 (UTC+0)
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Mayakp.wiki
mentioned this in
T298061: Investigate drops in non-bot edits
Jan 28 2022, 10:06 PM
2022-01-28 22:06:25 (UTC+0)
nettrom_WMF
closed this task as
Resolved
Feb 2 2022, 5:53 PM
2022-02-02 17:53:00 (UTC+0)
Comment Actions
We've complete the analyses in the subtasks and continued to monitor views from iOS 15 and through the relay. At the moment there doesn't appear to be any immediate concerns or developments. If something comes up, we'll file new tasks.
sgrabarczuk
closed subtask
T292524: Community Relations support for the iCloud Relay situation
as
Resolved
Apr 19 2022, 11:40 PM
2022-04-19 23:40:15 (UTC+0)
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