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adguard vpn selling user data to third-parties? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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my apologies for the long screenshot. i had purchased adguard's vpn service for five years since its primary adguard service is well know in the iapple ecosystem.

on android, though, their app appears to send data to a lot of third-parties. has it always been this compromised? am i a fool to go for their vpn services as well?

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[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Hey I gave it a second try with another tool: PCAPdroid and I'm not sure what I'm looking at ... Adguard VPN seems effectively to send a lot of traffic to strange DNS requests...

Just by opening the app and loggin in a fake account I got over 200 requests...

I'm not an expert but those requests seem sketchy !!!!

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So at this point you're still not connecting the VPN or anything? This is just after you log in?

[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes :) just after I login ! PCAPdroid doesn't allow a VPN connection.

[–] Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 2 points 8 months ago

PCAPdroid doesn't allow a VPN connection.

Could that be why the TCP status on those requests is Closed?

[–] Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Edit: I'm remembering that some VPN services use users devices as a server of their own, proxying connections for other users on another service. I don't know what's going on here, but if you don't have Tiktok and Snapchat both installed then I'd say that's likely what's going on. I've never used AdGuatd, there are much better VPN services.

I'm gonna say you have Tiktok and Snapchat installed on your phone? The rest of those are just random services (CDNs, ads, analytics, bug reporting, etc) that background apps (some are from Tiktok and Snapchat, but tons of apps use the same ones) are connecting to.

Set up NextDNS on your phone without any VPN running and odds are you'll see the same.

[–] ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

wow. this is good detail, indeed!

so is this an app one should avoid using, then?

[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I would say Yes. If you are on android give PCAPdroid a try and see it by yourself.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 3 points 8 months ago

I tried this but can't reproduce your results. AdGuard doesn't seem to be sending any weird DNS or tracking requests on my phone.

I'm fairly certain you're seeing some kind of false positive, but I don't quite know what's going on exactly.