A journal of my thoughts, longer than is appropriate for the Midnight Pub.
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I hate ads. I think anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I hate ads. For most of my ad-blocking needs, I use uBlock Origin on my desktop browser, and that seems to work fine most of the time.
But there are situations where uBlock Origin does not cut it. For instance, I couldn't find a way to block ads in mobile apps on my iOS device. (I know you're saying "just buy the ad-free version and support the developer!" but there's no way in hell I'm going to pay a weather app $12/mo just to get ad-free access)
I did manage to block ads in Safari on iOS successfully thanks to iOS 15 making it possible for Safari on iOS to have extensions support. But that's still not system-wide, and I see ads across all kinds of apps on iOS.
At one point, I decided to just shut up and deal with them. But over time I started getting more and more privacy-conscious. I used to have an Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat profiles. I deleted all of those. I used to have Twitter, and I deleted that too. I use Mastodon now. I've gone through my phone's privacy settings and fine-tuned everything for maximum protection. I've deleted any and all apps that I don't use, leaving me with the bare essentials. I go through my App Privacy Report weekly.
But through all of that, there's one thing that I couldn't get rid of: the ads. From a privacy perspective, ads are like cancer. I understand that developers want to have a way to earn from their hard work without having to bug the user for donations/subscriptions, but to me I don't like the idea of adding ads to my app, sacrificing my users' privacy, just for me to make a few bucks.
So I kept dealing with the ads, with seemingly no way to get rid of them. Until recently. I was scrolling through the app store, and found AdGuard. "This is interesting", I thought. I gave it a go on my desktop first before installing it on my phone.
Based on my experience so far, I have not encountered a single ad throughout the course of my browsing with AdGuard installed on my computer. I've visited some very ad-heavy websites and I haven't seen any ads whatsoever.
I've been using the AdGuard app for a while now and I am absolutely loving it. If there's one thing that I can definitively recommend for anyone (not just the privacy-conscious), it's AdGuard. I've installed it onto my iPhone as well and it works just as well. The user interface is very clean and easy to navigate, and the settings aren't too complicated to understand either. The app can even block out malicious websites before it's too late, which can really save you if you accidentally click on that link in that suspicious email you just received.
Seriously, this app is a lifesaver. The thing I've been looking for all this time. I'd highly recommend that you install this as soon as possible.
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