🇫🇷 French police now can access suspects' phone cameras and mics

This isn't the first time when a government tries to reach its hand into people's private affairs. But we're more accustomed to police reading messages and emails, and it is usually served with "terrorist protection" sauce.

This time, however, French police will be able to go much further and remotely activate cameras, microphones, and geolocation systems on any connected device — whether it be a car, laptop or mobile phone. And you don't have to be a terrorist to become the target of such surveillance: being suspect to any crime punishable by at least 5 years in prison will suffice.

We're grading the new law on a scale from "They did nothing wrong" to "Literally 1984" in our new blog article.

🧩🌎 AdGuard VPN Browser Extension v2.0.16

AdGuard has become one of the first VPNs in the world to migrate to Manifest V3, Chrome's new extension API! It proved to be no easy task, but we managed to overcome all challenges and keep all functionality — something that not every extension can boast.

All this work will pay off in full if and when Google goes through with its plan to disable all extensions working on the old API in 2024. We'll be ready!

Today we're going to share with you the details of our journey and tell you about the new AdGuard VPN version and the obstacles we had to overcome during its development.

🌐⚖️ Net Neutrality Day Sale

We support the principles of net neutrality. We believe that ISPs should not dictate the rules by which Internet works, block websites at will or charge extra for certain types of traffic.

To support all like-minded people, we offer discounts on AdGuard products:

Up to 4️⃣0️⃣% off AdGuard Ad Blocker licenses

👉 GRAB THIS DISCOUNT

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8️⃣0️⃣% off AdGuard VPN 2-year subscriptions

👉 GRAB THIS DISCOUNT

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Hurry up to take advantage of the lowered prices!

The offer is valid through July 13th

🤖⚔️📺 Can AI block ads better than humans? We tested GPT-AdBlocker on YouTube videos

Sometimes it seems that AI can do everything. It even gets integrated into various apps and browser extensions, and ad blockers are no exception.

We found GPT-AdBlocker, a Chrome extension that can work as a regular ad blocker, but more importantly takes advantage of GPT-4 to cut sponsored segments out of YouTube videos. Of course, we took it for a spin.

The results were somewhat disappointing, but also made us think. While GPT-AdBlocker in its current form often failed to provide a seamless cut, missed sponsored segments or skipped over parts of the actual content, it is evident that AI will be part of ad blocking one way or another in the not-so-distant future.

Jump into our new article and make your own judgment if AI did a good job on dealing with YouTube ads.

👩‍🏫 Getting to know AdGuard v4.0 for Android: Assistant

Today we conclude the series of “Getting to know AdGuard v4.0 for Android” articles. And the topic for today is Assistant, a tool that will make your interaction with AdGuard easy and efficient.

Even if you knew about Assistant before, you probably didn't know all the possibilities it provides to you:

- View recent activity of any app or website
- View detailed app & website statistics
- Quickly access Firewall and App management
- Add any website to allowlist

Learn how to make the most of AdGuard Assistant and save yourself time from our new blog article.

🏡 AdGuard Home v0.107.34

Back in June we released an update to AG Home with several bugfixes. Ironically, it introduced a different bug that was sometimes leading to lowered performance, random crashes, and huge CPU spikes.

The bug proved to be very hard to track down, but with the help of our awesome community we managed. "The Bug" turned out to actually be three smaller bugs in an overcoat, and we dealt with all of them.

Complete changelog is available on GitHub.

🌠 AdGuardian: Your Privacy and Security Guide

Do you care about your online privacy? Want to keep up with what happens in the world of ad blocking, data protection, and relevant AI developments? Then we have news for you.

We're launching AdGuardian — a biweekly newsletter where we choose the most interesting topics of the past two weeks and analyze them in depth: how these events will affect the global industry and you personally, how to respond to them, and what to expect in the future.

If you're already subscribed to AdGuard news, check out your inbox — the first issue of AdGuardian should already be waiting for you there. And if not, subscribe and don't miss the next one!

‼️ AdGuardian is only available in English language at this time. If you want to receive it, make sure to switch Language for emails in your AdGuard Account's Settings tab to English.

📲 Meta wants you to download apps directly by clicking Facebook ads

EU privacy legislation called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is designed to curb the power of “gatekeepers”. When it comes to app stores, the market is largely divided between Google and Apple. But starting next year, DMA will prohibit them from favoring their own services and preventing users from installing competing app stores.

Here enters Meta, announcing its intentions to launch an "app distribution system" that would allow users to download apps directly by clicking the ads and bypassing Google Play and App Store. Developers are being lured into this scheme by promises of no store commission whatsoever.

When you hear the words "no commission", you know there has to a catch, especially when Meta is involved. Read our thoughts on what exactly Meta stands to gain — and who's going to pay for that gain — in the new blog article.

📚 AdGuard's news digest

In today's edition:

🎸 Google’s Bard AI chatbot launches in EU after privacy delay

🚰 Tax prep sites leak sensitive user data to Meta and Google

🏋️‍♂️ Shutterstock allows OpenAI to train AI on its images for 6 more years

🍪 Google’s replacement for tracking cookies will require consent

🌎 Google aims to scrape the entire Internet to train AI, faces lawsuit

🇺🇸🇪🇺 US and EU agree on deal to transfer personal data across Atlantic

🧩 AdGuard Ad Blocker Browser extension v4.2.142 Beta

We're on the verge of releasing v4.2 to release channel. This beta cleans up some bugs, such as false triggering of the $popup modifier, and improves the way cosmetic rules are applied.

Full changelog is available on GitHub.

🧵 Revealing privacy-related mysteries around Meta's Threads app

Threads, a new text, video, and image sharing app by Meta, has arrived on the social media scene with a bang. It showed the most rapid growth among all apps, surpassing even ChatGPT, and has already been labelled by many as "Twitter killer".

But there are many controversial things about Threads, which is not too surprising for a Meta-developed product. Why is there no ads in Threads yet, and when will they arrive? Why Threads aren't available in Europe, even with VPN? And why does Meta nuke your Instagram account if you decide to delete your Threads profile?

So many questions, and we do our best at answering them all in our new article.

📊 The big brother in your pocket: billions of people became part of a hidden ‘reputation score’ system

Do you have a smartphone? Then it's very likely that you are assigned a "reliability rating" that you have no idea about.

BICS, a Belgian telecom giant, connects networks of mobile phone providers in over 200 countries, gaining access to personal information of billions of customers. It then shares this data with an American company TeleSign, which assigns ‘reputation scores’ to phone numbers and sells this data further.

What information about you gets profiled and can anything be done about it — find out from our newest article.

🤖 AdGuard v4.1 for Android beta

We've made a number of improvements to the UI and internal workings of our app.

For example, we've redesigned the YouTube player to support all video formats, including live streams and shorts. Check out the Protection section for a detailed description of this feature.

We've also made it easier for you to access Apps Management. It's now just one tap away via the button we've added to the tab bar menu at the bottom.

Update your app now to enjoy these new features! 🚀

The complete list of changes is available on GitHub

🧭 AdGuard v 1.11.14 for Safari

This update contains several fixes, including fixes to performance-related bugs in rules converter. We've also updated Scriptlets, SafariConverterLib, and AdGuard Assistant.

Full changelog is available on our website.

🌐 Google wants to kill open Web under the guise of making it safer

Google historically hasn't been friendly towards ad blockers, but this time the media giant takes it to the whole new level. If Google's new initiative comes through, it will affect not only ad filtering tools, but may shape the entire Internet anew — and changes won't be for the better.

The proposed Web Environment Integrity (WEI) API suggests that every time you visit a website, it may consult a third-party "attester" whether your device and application are "trustworthy". And if they are deemed as not, tough luck! No access for you. It's not clear who will act as the "attesters", but everything points towards Google being one of them.

This is not just about ad blockers. If this initiative comes through, we will face a reality where to access a particular website you'd need an "approved" device and browser.

Let's not let this happen. We need to raise the awareness and draw privacy regulators' attention to this matter. Share the news on social media and be loud about it — only this way we can stop WEI.

🌎 AdGuard VPN v2.4 for Android

Many AdGuard VPN users asked us about this, so we deliver: cross-language location search. Now you can find the location you need by its country code, no matter which language you have selected for your AdGuard VPN client. For example, start typing "US" into the search bar and you'll see all the :us: servers.

Of course, we've fixed some bugs too — what is an update without some bugfixing?

Update the app and let us know what you think about the new version!

🏡 AdGuard Home v0.107.35

In the previous release, we optimized the filtering-rule list updates, achieving up to three times speedup in some cases. However, the new algorithm proved to be too strict, so in this release we have relaxed its validations while maintaining the optimization for more typical filtering-rule lists.

As always, there are other minor bug fixes in this release as well. Complete changelog is available on our website.

🤖 AdGuard Ad Blocker v4.1 for Android

It feels like v4.0 was released just yesterday, yet here we are with the next version of AdGuard for Android.

Today we bring to your attention a reworked YouTube player that supports all video formats, including Live Streams and Shorts.

A reminder — this player is required to block ads in YT app. It is based on the internal web browser that opens YouTube and has ad-blocking functionality built in.

Apps Management has become more easily accessible. Now it's now just one tap away via the button we've added to the tab bar menu at the bottom.

🏁 The AI Arms Race: Can Ad Blockers Keep Up with AI-Generated Ads?

You can hardly name an industry that doesn't at least try to benefit from AI. And ad tech industry is certainly taking advantage of AI to the fullest. Google, Meta, and Amazon all do their best to provide advertisers the best tools to create AI-generated ads.

And while this certainly helps cut down the costs of producing ad copy, banners, and even ad videos, this is not good news for consumers. There will be more ads, and they will be more pervasive and, probably, more effective.

Can ad blockers, the trusty companions for anyone who wants to get away from omnipresent ads, put up a good fight? Perhaps, but it would mean turning to AI too. Who would emerge victorious in this battle of AIs — in our new blog article.

🖥 AdGuard Ad Blocker v7.14 for Windows

The most visible change in this update is new tray icons. We gave them a new look, hope you like it better than the old ones!

We also updated WFP and TDI drivers, thus improving AdGuard's compatibility with other applications.

You can find more details in our blog article.

🪙 AdGuard Ad Blocker: now purchasable with Crypto!

This payment method has already been available for AdGuard VPN for a while, but now we bring the good news to Ad Blocker users!

There are many already-established payment methods with their own advantages, such as bank cards, PayPal, Apple/Google Pay, etc., and they don't go anywhere. But cryptocurrencies bring some unique qualities to the table.

It's a safe way to pay for things that ensures maximum anonymity. All transactions are encrypted and extremely difficult to hack. Cryptocurrencies also aren't regulated by any particular government, which means you can send money from anywhere to anywhere.

We accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Tether. You can buy AdGuard Ad Blocker with crypto (or in many other ways) at adguard.com.