Ad blockers are insanely powerful software. They often have broad permissions and can intercept web requests, which is exactly why I wanted to do this interview with Andrey from AdGuard: people install whatever shows up first in a search result and “just blindly trust them,” and that’s a bad idea. In this conversation, we break down what “filtering” actually means across the stack: local/system-wide filtering (a network filter on your device), DNS filtering for your entire network (including smart TVs, fridges, and other “smart” junk), and why a VPN can still matter even after you block known trackers (because your IP address can still be used to correlate behavior). Andrey also explains the real concern people have when they hear “intercepting traffic”: with ad blockers, the interception and decision-making happens locally on-device, using filter rules that are maintained openly (including on GitHub), not by uploading your browsing traffic to a server. We also get into how browser-based blockers compare to system-wide filtering—especially with Chromium’s Manifest V3 limitations—and why AdGuard has historically worked so well on Safari/iOS. Finally, Andrey previews Apple’s newer direction for system-wide ad blocking APIs on iOS, which could be a major privacy shift because it’s designed to let blockers work without ever seeing your traffic.