Why Everyone Should Use an Ad Blocker (AdGuard Interview)

Techlore Talks brings you in-depth conversations with the experts at the forefront of digital rights, privacy and security.

Ad blockers have broad permissions to intercept all your web traffic—which means you need to know which ones to trust. Henry interviewed the CTO and co-founded of AdGuard about why they pivoted from data collection to privacy protection, how DNS filtering differs from local ad blocking, and Apple's revolutionary new API that lets ad blockers work system-wide on iOS without ever seeing your traffic.

🔐

Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. You can also watch Techlore Talks on YouTube or Techlore.TV

Episode Timestamps

0:00:00 INTRO
00:06:04 PRE-SNOWDEN VS. POST-SNOWDEN
00:07:58 TYPES OF FILTERING
00:15:03 LOCAL FILTERING VS. DNS & VPN
00:18:14 INTERCEPTING WEB TRAFFIC CONCERNS
00:21:27 ADGUARD VS. BROWSER SOLUTIONS
00:26:15 ADGUARD EXTENSION VS. OTHERS
00:31:15 ADGUARD FILTERING VS. OTHERS
00:32:04 ADGUARD HOME
00:34:08 PRICING STRUCTURE
00:35:52 BASED IN CYPRUS?
00:38:25 OPEN SOURCE?
00:41:04 THE AD BLOCKING ECOSYSTEM
00:44:26 MITIGATING ATTACKS
00:51:13 THE ROLE OF AD BLOCKING
00:54:37 APPLE'S NEW API
00:57:38 COMPARISON TO DNS FILTERING
00:58:56 ETA FOR THESE UPDATES
00:59:43 APPLE'S PATTERN
01:00:58 BLOCKING APPLE DOMAINS
01:02:28 WRAPPING UP

Episode Sources

• AdGuard: https://adguard.com/
• AdGuard Home: https://adguard.com/en/adguard-home/overview.html
• AdGuard DNS: https://adguard-dns.io/
• AdGuard VPN: https://adguard-vpn.com/
• AdGuard Mail: https://adguard-mail.com/
• Andrey's AFDS 2025 Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2c5WMjpVZc