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?

  • ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.worldOP
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    8 months ago

    thanks for the feedback. i would be happy to hear what I’m presuming incorrectly here. always willing to learn and gain an understanding of how things do work.

    • Waltzy@feddit.uk
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      8 months ago

      Not op ( that guy was being intolerably rude ) but I’m not surprised that ddg is reporting that a vpn app is sending all these requests, the very nature of a VPN app is to capture and proxy all your traffic, so it will end up proxy all the tracking requests on your system. These likely came from a browser ( any site with an Amazon button for example will likely show as an amazing tracking hit )

      In short, your VP is likely not selling your data.

      • ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.worldOP
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        8 months ago

        i get what you’re saying, but the vpn was inactive when the app sent these requests. DDG was active at the time and using the VPN slot.

        so it isn’t the vpn functionality, per se, of the app that’s doing anything here.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      8 months ago

      The problem with a VPN is that it isn’t a technology that’s designed to be private. It actually mainly was used for companies until recently.

      When you use your VPN you are tunneling your traffic to someone else’s servers. They can see the same data your ISP can. Hopefully everything you do is encrypted but that is a discussion for another day. The point is that a VPN companies servers are no more trustworthy than the rest of the internet. You can’t control anything that leaves your device. That’s not how the internet was designed and it can’t be changed no matter how many claims a VPN company may make. Someone somewhere will always see you connect to the internet. At the end of the day you give up some privacy in exchange for your ability to use the internet.

      In a nutshell, VPNs are mostly just snake oil

      • ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.worldOP
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        8 months ago

        all good info. and all agreed. but the issue in this post isn’t the vpn functionality.

        it’s what the adguard android app does in the background when the vpn, itself, is disconnected. that’s when these rogue requests were sent.