Apple is facing a fresh legal challenge over one of its biggest privacy promises. The Clarkson Law Firm has filed a proposed class action lawsuit accusing the company of misleading iCloud+ customers about the protection offered by iCloud Private Relay. The case comes days after reports revealed that certain features in Apple’s WebKit browser engine could expose users’ real IP addresses and other information despite Private Relay being enabled. The lawsuit claims customers paid for a service designed to keep their online activity private, only to discover that the protection could fail in some situations. At the time of writing, Apple has not publicly commented on the lawsuit.
The Clarkson Law Firm argues that Apple marketed iCloud Private Relay as a strong privacy feature while failing to provide the level of protection customers expected. The firm described the situation as an ‘outrageous betrayal of consumer trust’ and said users could potentially be tracked or profiled because of the reported weaknesses.
Private Relay is designed to prevent websites from seeing a user’s real IP address while also keeping their browsing activity private from the network provider. It is available as part of Apple’s iCloud+ subscription.
The latest legal action follows security reports published earlier this month by 404 Media. Researchers found several ways in which WebKit could allow information to escape the Private Relay system. Not only that but Apple also acknowledged the report to the media and told them that their team is reviewing the content of the findings.
One issue involves DNS prefetching, which can allow some website names to be looked up through a regular internet connection instead of the protected route. Another involves WebAuthn, the standard behind passkeys, which is a validation file fetched during passkey checks and can reveal a user’s real IP address. WebTransport has also been reported to create direct connections that can expose the same information.
The concerns are particularly important on iPhones because Apple requires browsers on iOS to use WebKit. This means the reported issues are not limited to Safari and could affect other browsers running on Apple’s mobile platform as well.
The Clarkson Law Firm is the same firm that has previously taken Apple to court over delayed Siri features. The case was settled with a proposed settlement of $250 million in December 2025, and the details regarding the same came out in May 2026. According to the court documents, Apple was accused of advertising improved Siri features before those features were actually available.