The AdGuard DNS blog covers the company's ad-blocking and privacy-focused DNS service, encrypted DNS, and related announcements.
HN links it when discussing DNS-level ad blocking. Commenters call it a satisfied-customer recommendation and compare it with Pi-hole, NextDNS, and Control D.
It isn't really primarily about organization oversight, though. The weird goings on are in practice usually at the behest of the people paying the salaries of all of the people involved (which includes law enforcement, which goes through corporate channels). There's no real independent oversight for that common case. Everyone is on the payroll. (-:
As a concrete thought experiment, consider if (say) a WWW/DNS hosting company providing such free proxy DNS service decided to covertly record the domain name lookups from the general public that fail in order to compile a list of domain names for the company to prospectively squat on. Having multiple employees handling the public service doesn't stop this if it is the company's actual business decision to sneakily do this.
It really is a statement of bus factor, not about oversight. To make a statement about oversight one has to take into account something else not covered by this list: which of the list entries has attempted to show some level of independent auditing or oversight of its data protection.
* https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-the-results-of-the-1-1-1-1-public-dns-resolver-privacy-examination/
CloudFlare has had some independent auditing done, by an accountancy firm. DNS4EU holds itself subject to GDPR rules on Personal Data with respect to query data, and so is auditable by the Czech ÚOOÚ. AdGuard likewise, except that it holds Personal Data in Frankfurt. CZ.NIC likewise, except that it hasn't…
> The experience is so awful when I browse on my iPad, instead of my Android phone with Firefox+UBlock. I really don't understand how most people can stand to browse with all the ads.
Most people don’t.
Most people who use anything for iOS tend to use things like:
- 1Blocker - super full featured, including custom script and css rules. business model is paid software, not ‘acceptable ads’ paying them for placement or third parties paying for your data
- AdGuard Pro - Similar to 1Blocker, less custom config friendly
- https://nextdns.io/ - pihole type blocker with unlimited configurations, custom rules, and analytics, native hooks for devices
- https://adguard-dns.io/ - similar DNS[1] service to nextdns.io with ability to upload your own rules based configurations
- Firefox Focus if using that ecosystem
- Brave if using that ecosystem
- iCab Mobile if wanting a super configurable browser with filter rules and longest history as indie browser for iOS
Folks also use ancillary quieters such as:
- Hiya - call / sms blocking
- Hushed - throwaway numbers for spam SMS
- - -
1. Note that the AdGuard public DNS server including custom DNS filtering rules has just (26 August 2022) gone open source: https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-dns-2-0-goes-open-source.html
> a configuration page for Pihole in your NAT router's web interface likely isn't coming soon. I hope that changes.
In the meantime, the majority of routers do allow you to specify the DNS resolver instead of using whatever it learns via WAN DHCP, so you could put in a filtered public resolver (as opposed to your own Pihole instance) which gives pretty similar results if you don't need to whitelist anything. Plus, you can do the same on mobile devices that roam beyond that router (and avoid VPN through said router). I've been using dns.adguard-dns.com (94.140.14.14 and 94.140.15.15) [0]. They were founded in Moscow but now operate out of Cyprus (EU) and I don't have much of a reason to trust any other DNS operator more than them.
[0] https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html -- "method 2"
I used to use AdGuard's DNS (https://adguard-dns.io/). It looks like they're going to be launching an upgraded version that you can customize in the future.
Right now, I'm using NextDNS (https://nextdns.io). It lets me add ad/tracking block lists, block specific domains (especially ones that serve annoying embeds in many sites), and setup rewrites so that I can have my-fake-domain.com resolve to localhost. I can use their DNS-over-HTTPS with Chrome/Edge/Firefox and I can setup my router to to use their DNS. It's basically my own little PiHole without needing the RaspberryPi (which are very hard to come by these days).
(Anxiously awaits someone on HN telling me that I shouldn't be using NextDNS)
I've tried hosted Pi-Hole and AdGuard Home. They are good as long as I'm around to fix stuffs. Then I tested something which can be global (home) and also for individual devices -- Control-D, NextDNS, and Adguard DNS. All of them works pretty well. If I really have to choose, then it would be in the order of NextDNS > Control-D > AdGuard DNS. Affiliated with none, and have decided to subscribe to all three to further test them for this year.
My eventual plan is to have a tool that works independently for each devices and home-ish setup that I can keep tinkering while taking care of the home-devices that stays home.
https://controld.com
https://nextdns.io
https://adguard-dns.io
People will mention PiHole and that's a neat solution if you want to maintain a server.
If you don't, https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html lets you point your DNS servers at AdGuard and let them block ads for you. No maintenance required.
One caveat: once in a while, like maybe once a year, my wife or I encounter a site that AdGuard blocks and we need to set our DNS back to "normal" for things to work. But you'll probably have the same issue with PiHole, which relies on lists of spammers or other undesirables.
PS: no relationship with AdGuard other than happily using their service.