Lately, I've been getting a message from Google saying it detects unusual traffic every time I search for something on my iPhone using Safari. This issue has been happening for about a month and has become frequent enough that it's almost impossible to search without encountering a captcha. It's only happening on AT&T's 5G network, and I'm not connected to any public Wi-Fi. I also checked and confirmed that iCloud Private Relay is off and I'm not using a VPN. Does anyone have any ideas on what's going on?
5 Answers
It's also possible that your internet carrier is using CGNAT (Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation), which can confuse services like Google. That might be what's behind the frequent captchas.
Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies? Sometimes, a simple restart of your device can help with issues like this too.
Do you have any ad-blocking extensions or privacy tools installed? Sometimes these can interfere with how websites interact with your browser. You might want to try disabling them temporarily, especially if you usually use private browsing windows. Also, there's a Google app for searching that might help bypass the issue without resolving the underlying problem.
It sounds like you might be using the iCloud Private Relay feature. This can cause your IP address to get mixed in with others, leading Google to flag it for unusual traffic. Since they're focused on advertising, they might be pushing these captchas to try and get you to turn off Apple's anonymity features.
What if my private relay is already off? I just checked and it's been disabled, so I'm not sure if that's the problem.
I experienced something similar with Google Maps while on a VPN. I fixed it by signing in on all my devices using the same Google account.
I've had a similar issue while trying to file for unemployment with my VPN active, and it ended up costing me two weeks! So frustrating!