AdGuard VPN - Are there any concerns from those who have used it so far?

VPN
1

So I’ve used a couple other VPNs over the years but have always gotten frustrated that I couldn’t use AdGuard Pro + my VPN on my iOS devices. Now that AdGuard VPN is an option that works alongside AdGuard Pro, I’d like to try it out but I’m hesitant.

There is a lot of shady practices in the VPN industry and so I’m hesitant to jump on board with a new entry, despite the fact that AdGuard seems to have a good reputation from their other products. For those that have tried the VPN, are there any concerns other users should be aware of?

Thanks

2

I’ve had nothing but issues with it. Have contacted their support many times but only had one message back saying thanks for making us aware. No offer of a solution or reason as to why it’s happening.

Main issue is with downloads not completely. They either fail once they’ve downloaded or restart the download from the beginning in an endless loop. This is the issue they said thanks for making us aware of.

Other issue is with random dropouts. Pages won’t load until I disconnect. No response to this yet.

I’ve been with them less than a month and have had to log back in to the app twice. Wouldn’t be a huge problem but as the app starts minimised to the tray I have no idea I’m not connected.

The whole service seems like it’s in alpha yet it’s something they’re advertising as better than other VPNs which can actually do the basics.

It may work better with iOS but I haven’t used it on there but with the issues I’ve had I’d use another provider until they’ve ironed out the kinks.

3

Honestly, it’s frightening that they’re rolling their own crypto. The last thing you want out of a VPN is an unaudited blackbox that you just have to trust. I cant fathom why they didnt build around wireguard, its fast, simple, audited to death and ported to almost everything

4

I’ve had drop-outs, servers appearing to be in different locations to where they are listed as being(e.g the ‘UK’ one showing as being in Morocco when using IP tracking sites) and slow speeds. Funnily it worked better when I used the free service, then I got a really good price for the paid-for version and its been much worse since then.

5

It’s because on wire guard you get a static IP and not a random DHCP IP.

6

That has nothing to do with anything. Your wireguard client IP is something that is used for policy management on the wireguard server, you still get a dhcp issued local IP on your lan. They can make the wireguard IP dynamically assignable

The DHCP issued IP//options like assigned DNS only matter if your using the VPN in a split tunnel setup, which again *is something wireguard doesnt interfere with

Edit: a word

7

WireGuard stores user IP addresses on the VPN server indefinitely
As others have pointed out, WireGuard was not built for anonymity and privacy, but rather security and speed.

By default, WireGuard saves connected IP addresses on the server . These user IP addresses are saved indefinitely on the server, or until the server is rebooted. This makes the out-of-the-box version of WireGuard incompatible with no-logs VPN services.

8

By default, WireGuard saves connected IP addresses on the server. These user IP addresses are saved indefinitely on the server, or until the server is rebooted. This makes the out-of-the-box version of WireGuard incompatible with no-logs VPN services.

To some degree, all VPNs have to retain WAN (not to be confused with DHCP leased LAN) IPs of connected devices in order to return traffic; this has to retained for the life of the active connection. As far as storing it indefinitely, that’s just a matter of server setup/configuration. Using a VPN isn’t exactly a secret, unless you’re tunneling through another protocol, ISPs can freely see and log your connection to the VPN. They can also see and log connections the VPN server makes to upstream sites. The important bit about no logging is that the VPN doesn’t record how traffic is internally routed.

As an example the ISP can see that clients A, B, C connect to the VPN and the VPN connects to X, Y, Z, but cant adequately correlate who is connecting to what sites through the VPN, unless the VPN logs that to disk. That information will be retained the VPNs memory as long as the connection is active, as that’s part of the required state for any VPN to function.

This makes the out-of-the-box version of WireGuard incompatible

This is a rather disingenuous argument given they rolled their own solution - which is as far from an out-of-the-box experience one can get. Further, wireguard is a protocol, not an out-of-the-box solution, logging or not logging, key exchanging, account management, etc are implementation/configuration details left to the provider. It seems silly to be saying configuring a server to use a protocol and not log is harder than making up a whole new protocol.

Mullvad has shown its feasible to configure wireguard for privacy and anonymity - their onboarding//payment process allows for complete anonymity as clients dont need any kind of identifying information to sign up and use the service.

My main point is I have a hard time understanding why they didnt use something that is proven - the anonymity argument doesnt hold water as that is an implementation detail orthogonal to wireguard. And I have a harder time trusting it when the client applications and underlying protocol arent audited and open source.

Dont get me wrong, I like Adguard and their products, but formally verifying something is cryptographically secure mathematically, and accurately translating that into code is a massive undertaking - and its not likely to be perfect on the first try.