I’ve been using AdGuard’s DNS resolver on my Android phone for a couple of months, and I’m pretty satisfied with it.
The idea is that it filters out ad networks at the DNS level, so there is no need to root the phone (nor to install any app). You just put dns.adguard-dns.com in your “private DNS” settings and that’s it.
Recently, though, I’ve seen a couple of people around here mentioning how Adguard is not trustworthy, or “kinda shady”. What’s your take on them? Their privacy policy seems OK to me, but I’d be interested to know more about them.
Why do you mention paying for a VPN as unsafe?
Specifically, the way iOS content blocking works is guaranteed safe. All it does is write to a file loaded by the Safari browser to block content, the app can’t do anything at all itself. No indication any VPN sold by AdGuard (or the local device-wide fake VPN) is particularly unsafe that I’ve seen.