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AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

adguard.com

31–40 of 111 posts

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#31
I believe Cisco umbrella(opendns) public resolver does similar filtering,although not sure if they have one for AD filtering.

Some mentioned trust,for me support for dns ovet https is much more important since I'd be using it over a VPN anyways. And for those thst dont,NAT and inability to correlate DNS lookups with actual (especially encrypted) traffic makes privacy a less significant concern for me.

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#32
The instructions to use adguard DNS on their website doesn't contain how to use adguard DNS over TLS with Android.

For anyone running on Android 9 (edit) or later, navigate to

Settings -> WiFi and Internet -> Private DNS

Select Private DNS provider hostname

Add dns.adguard.org (DNS over TLS)

Click save.

Visit https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/ and you should see browser's 'Server not found' instead of Google's (disable existing ad-blockers or they might jump in and block the URL anyway)

---

For anyone on Android 4.0 or later, consider using Google's Intra [0] to use adguard DNS over HTTPS, if you prefer it over cloudflare's or google's.

Install Intra.

Open the app, click on Settings.

Choose customer URL and paste: https://dns.adguard.com/dns-query

Be sure to 'lock the app' to prevent it from being killed in the background.

[0] https://getintra.org

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#33
post #13

I’ve been using Pi-Hole on my home network and it’s amazing. Routinely 18-20%% of DNS requests are blocked. When my wife goes out onto another network she says she is shocked at how ugly her web browsing becomes (ads on nytimes, huffpo, etc). I highly recommend it. Am using it with cloudfare’s encrypted DNS just as one more middle finger to my ISP.

You might already know this, but in case you don't: they can still see the domain names you visit in plain text because of TLS SNI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication

Encrypted SNI is a thing on the horizon that'll let us give the dual middle finger to our ISPs. As far as I know, it is not here now though.

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#34

The instructions to use adguard DNS on their website doesn't contain how to use adguard DNS over TLS with Android. For anyone running on Android 9 (edit) or later, navigate to Settings -> WiFi and Internet -> Private DNS Select Private DNS provider hostname Add dns.adguard.org (DNS over TLS) Click save. Visit https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/ and you should see browser's 'Server not found' instead of Google's (dis…

This was introduced in Pie (Android 9), so it's most likely not working with Oreo (Android 8).

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#35

Great idea, but how is this monetized or supported? What are they doing with the data?

It doesn't cost that much to run a DNS server, even with DoH/DoT. You can easily serve a few million users with a milisecond latency off a cheap instance with 2GB instance.

That's not to say the cost is zero, but with with multiple caching layers (O/S, browser, router, etc), and serving same results for everyone, server costs are not very high.

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#36

The instructions to use adguard DNS on their website doesn't contain how to use adguard DNS over TLS with Android. For anyone running on Android 9 (edit) or later, navigate to Settings -> WiFi and Internet -> Private DNS Select Private DNS provider hostname Add dns.adguard.org (DNS over TLS) Click save. Visit https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/ and you should see browser's 'Server not found' instead of Google's (dis…

This was introduced in Pie (Android 9), so it's most likely not working with Oreo (Android 8).

Thanks, changed it now. Added instructions for Android 4.0 and above, too.

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#37
post #4

Pi hole (free) is good for this kind of thing if you are at home https://pi-hole.net/ I found that pihole did too much so wrote my own. I dont think it has any users, except in my house but it seems to work https://github.com/time4tea-net/py-hole/blob/master/README.m...

But does it work on outside home and on 4G?

For a business turnkey solution for this. Adblock DNS + VPN check out https://ba.net/adblockvpn

Disclosure. I work at ba.net

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#38

On one hand, it looks pretty cool and convenient. On the other, using a DNS server requires a lot of trust. Giving some unknown company the ability to trivially man-in-the-middle your connection or sell your browsing history is pretty scary. The fact that their code is open source helps a bit, but there's no way to tell whether the code running on their servers is the same as on github. I'll stick with my pihole/host…

it doesn't seem like they have mentioned it but this is an alternative to their existing self-hosted dns solution.

https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#39
post #35

Great idea, but how is this monetized or supported? What are they doing with the data?

It doesn't cost that much to run a DNS server, even with DoH/DoT. You can easily serve a few million users with a milisecond latency off a cheap instance with 2GB instance. That's not to say the cost is zero, but with with multiple caching layers (O/S, browser, router, etc), and serving same results for everyone, server costs are not very high.

This might be a little more expensive than usual if it returns NXDOMAIN for known ad serving domains. Many DNS clients don't cache failures.

Re: AdGuard DNS: A Privacy-Oriented DNS Server

#40
Misleading claim: any external DNS server is not private. Your requests are directed to a third-party. I suspect data-mining you is how they pay their server bills.

The correct technical solution for privacy is running your own DNS server locally.

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