this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
58 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy Guides

14845 readers
30 users here now

In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more...


Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!


This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

Additional Resources:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

which is more effective, useful, and efficient?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Adguard with DNS + local blocking is the way.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I did this for the longest time until I realised that because AdGuard works best as a virtual VPN, it is unable to run alongside an actual VPN. Luckily my VPN (and many others) support ad blocking too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Adguard VPN and Adguard (adblocker) can work simultaneously 😀😀😀

The only caveat is that Adguard VPN only works with their servers, so you can't, for example, VPN to your home or work network.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's not what I'm talking about. I meant to say that AdGuard on mobile (Android) runs by pretending to be a VPN in order to intercept all connections and filter the ads out of them. This works great to remove ads in apps, etc.

However, because it hooks into the VPN interface you can't then run another VPN (for example Proton VPN) because Android only allows one VPN to run at any time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Right. I understand that.

What i mean is that if you want to run a VPN with Adguard, then Adguard VPN is compatible.

Not ideal, I get it, but if you need to bypass geo restrictions or to keep your ISP from spying on you, then it works great.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh you're talking about AdGuard VPN not solely the main AdGuard product. Definitely not ideal. It doesn't offer the same level of features as my current VPN who offers ad blocking anyway. Not to mention a few suspicious quotes from their website:

AdGuard VPN protocol uses the most secure and fast encryption algorithm to date – AES-256

From the very outset, we resolved to develop and deploy an in-house VPN protocol instead of picking a canned solution — that’d be too easy

We are going to make our protocol implementation publicly available in the future. Sadly, right now we don't have enough time to prepare the project

we collect data about how you interact with our services, how much traffic you’ve used, and for how long have you been using our services

ADGUARD SOFTWARE LIMITED is a company registered in Nicosia, Cyprus, registered office is at Klimentos 41-43, KLIMENTOS TOWER, Flat/Office 25, 1061, Nicosia, Cyprus and acts as the data controller when processing your data

Considering Cyprus telecommunications laws it doesn't seem like the safest place to headquarter a telecommunications privacy company.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Adguard has been a trusted company in the adblocking space for a very long time, and their CEO and company is quite openly active in the privacy and cybersecurityrealm, so that's important.

That said, their VPN is a really new product, so there's a lot of room for improvement.

They do have the best adblocking solution, in my opinion, so if VPN is also needed, they give you something for that. The alternatives are often messy or not totally compatible.

For me, it works great for bypassing geo restrictions, but my threat model isn't on the extreme end. I got a plan really cheap, so it saves me money over PIA and Windscribe, which i used previously (and sucked for streaming).

I do suggest that everyone find a solution that works for them, regardless of who they go with.