Hi,
I recently switched to an iPhone and checked the section for safari extensions on the Privacy Guides website, and I was extremely displeased to see AdGuard being recommended, which made me reevaluate how I see PrivacyGuides.
There’s a high chance that AdGuard could be compromised (emphasis on could). It’s a Russian company, with employees STILL WORKING IN MOSCOW (according to their subreddit posts - Reddit - Dive into anything).
“Our head office is physically located in Moscow, however, legally AdGuard is a Cypriot company and abides by the EU laws” ← this sounds extremely naive to me, as in saying “it’s illegal to start wars, and Russia is definitely not invading another country right now”.
Yes, it was bought by a Cyprus company a few years ago but the fact that it’s still originated in Russia and more importantly - has developers stationed there right now and working from there - is extremely alarming.
I can’t verify that what they submit to the iOS store is the same as what’s in their open source repo, and even if I could - are we really okay with trusting to route internet traffic (they have dns/vpn services) and trusting them with sensitive information (giving full ad blocking permissions means they can read password fields) to a company with employees that will have to comply with secret local government laws like in Russia? Do we really think that the Russian government already hasn’t tried to make its local tech companies comply with shady things and spy on others?
Those are serious questions. I’m very disappointed with PG unless there’s a really good case to be made here with significant proof that AdGuard can be trusted