Serious iOS issue: nightly iCloud backups blocked by Blokada blocked sites

Support
1

I’ve had Blokada installed on my iOS/iPadOS devices for several years. But since April 23, iCloud backups have failed on all my iOS devices.

After spending about 24 hours trying to find out why, I finally found the culprit: Blokada 6.

You block:

  • gateway.icloud.com and

  • gateway.fe2.apple-dns.net

Why on earth would you do that? Those URLs keep iCloud nightly backups from getting off the ground. How could you not have tested this before shipping?

I await an explanation.

2

Hi,
Those domains were definitely not blocked intentionally by us. Most likely, one of the enabled blocklists started including them after a routine list update.

We’ll investigate this on our side, but could you help us narrow it down?
If it’s been less than 24 hours since you added your exceptions for these two domains, you’ll find a search box in the Recent Activity (See All) section of the Privacy Pulse screen. Once you find these two blocked entries, you can click on them to see which blocklist is responsible:

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That information would help us identify the source much faster.

Thanks for taking the time to investigate and report this.

4

Hmmm … here’s the relevant screenshot, but it doesn’t contain the blocklist:

IMG_2245
IMG_22451436×1711 134 KB

5

Yeah, it looks like the exception you added is being treated as more important on this screen.

Could you please temporarily remove these two exceptions and check this screen again after the next night? And if you have any other Apple-related “Blocked” exceptions of your own, you can also temporarily remove them, just in case.

We do not see any change on our side that could have caused the mentioned domains to become automatically blocked, so this is the only lead we have at this point.

6

When I re-block the domain, Blokada tells me that it doesn’t belong to any blocklist.

I have no idea how it could have gotten to where it was. Is there an activity log I can consult?

7

When I re-block the domain

Do you mean that you deleted your “Allow” rules, or did you manually add “Block” rules for these two addresses? I wanted to check whether returning to the default settings (i.e. without custom exceptions for these two domains) would cause your problem with the nightly backup of your device to return.

Is there an activity log I can consult?

All activity is stored on the Privacy Pulse screen.